


Three-Fold

by votsalot



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: At one point they have to pretend they were in a relationship and it's super awkward, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, It's like Groundhog's Day except this time it's different and features multiple people, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mentions of Suicide Attempt, POV Multiple, Period-Typical Homophobia, Psychological/Emotional Thriller, Suspense, Time Travel, Time loops galore, World War I, You might even be able to call this horror?, depictions of ptsd, downstairs-centric, dying resets the loop, magical curses, war typical violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-12-27 07:49:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21115277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/votsalot/pseuds/votsalot
Summary: When a mysterious painting arrives at Downton Abbey in October of 1928, servants start disappearing. First Thomas Barrow, then Anna Bates, and finally Phyllis Baxter. As they discover, where they've been matters greatly. But it's not nearly as important as where they end up going. Set post-movie.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If Lavinia Swire can canonically haunt a planchette board for two minutes, why can't there be an unknowable cursed alternate dimension time-loop painting?

Death is proof of the unknowable nature of the universe. No one can know all things, no one can experience every pleasure, no one can experience every pain. Within the breadth of one lifetime, there are finitely numbered days and infinite variables held inside them.

Therefore, it would make sense that within these infinite variables and numbered days, there would be some very old Things in very old places. Things no one has had the time or chance to find. Some intend it this way. They wait, touchstones of time around which the world turns and changes. But these Things do not change. They wait. And wait. And wait. For the fulfillment of Their purpose. For some it never happens. Others sit in webs of fate and draw gossamer strands of circumstance towards Themselves, often so slowly that what They have in Their grasp never even realizes it was caught.

Some you can touch, run your fingers along the cracks or the gloss. Others are less tangible - They are ideas. Entirely conceivable, but completely untouchable. Then there are the Ones that are both.

And then there are the Ones that are neither.

But there are also the few special Things that are simply Everything.


	2. 1928

** _Late October, 1928_ **

_\---_

“It’s....certainly arresting,” it was obvious to any bystander that Lord Grantham received the gift with as much grace as he could muster.

“When we discovered the inscription on the frame,” Professor Twilton was exploding with enthusiasm, “we knew we had to return this piece to its place of origin. Lord Grantham, I cannot begin to explain to you how incredible this work of art truly is!”

The man was the opposite of everything one could possibly conjure when presented with the term “art historian.” His hair had a peculiar kempt-but-unkempt quality emphasized by the way he had to keep brushing stray gray locks back into place from where they stuck to his forehead. He spoke with his hands frantically, as if trying to catch the words as they streamed from his mouth. He was certainly unreserved, certainly  _ very _ excited, and certainly more than Robery Crawley seemed prepared to handle on this otherwise quiet day.

Thomas stood by in his usual non-descript corner, mid-afternoon coffee steaming and at the ready. They had expected this visitor, so there were also neat trays of finger sandwiches and other savories. If he held perfectly still and leveled his gaze just so, the simple but elegant presentation of food would be more noticeable than he was. Though he doubted anyone’s attention was going to be drawn his way. It was entertaining to watch Professor Twilton gesticulate and point to specific parts of the painting, Lord Grantham struggling to keep up with the man’s breathy explanations about the importance of symbolism.

Inwardly, Thomas wondered why Lady Grantham was not the one who had received this visitor. Surely, business at the village hospital could wait for at least an hour or two? The Professor wasn’t even staying for dinner. He blinked quickly and gently chewed at the inside of his cheek. Carson would’ve told him that why their employer’s did or didn’t do something was not his concern, and that the only thing he should be worried about was what they wanted him to do and how quickly he should do it. Thomas took a little moment to think  _ Why? _ extra hard, and in the direction of the Carson residence. 

“- and the frame is oak, what variety we aren’t certain, but we tried to date it. We couldn’t pin-point the exact date, but it’s incredibly old. Perhaps it’s a local variety?” Twilton looked expectantly at his captive audience.

Lord Grantham feigned a close look. “...Possibly.” The man was not used to being put on the spot in his own library. Thomas doubted he knew the names of the flowers that grew in the garden - well, perhaps a few. Thomas didn’t think he could name many himself.

“Regardless, it is simply astounding,” Twilton cast his arms open as if in an attempt to embrace the thing - it was massive, and free-standing. Six feet long, about the height of a grown man. It was actually not one painting, but three; they hinged together to form what the professor had called, “a uniquely exquisite example of a triptych.” The panel in the middle was slightly taller than the other two; a wooden carving of three rabbits chasing themselves in a spiral lived on top of it. The bottom had six pairs of paw-like knobs that acted as supporting feet.

“Surely oak, and surely original,” Twilton said definitely. “You can tell because the canvas is unmarked, the patina is impeccable, and it’s all fit-together with sliding dovetails.”

Beautiful as the massive frame might have been, Thomas couldn’t find much to like about the triptych itself. The colors were sombre, heavy. The whole thing was aswirl with smaller details he couldn’t see from his post. From what he could see, the content was achingly religious. The biggest panel featured the Virgin Mary, in her arm was a bare infant Jesus. Leaning on her other side was Jesus, the full-grown savior. But this was no  _ Pieta _ \- there was no grace. Mary’s mouth was open in a jagged upside-down U-shape, the infant in her arms appeared to be slipping out. His fingers grasped at her dusky blue veil. The grown Jesus did not appear to have the support of his legs, and the weight of his body was too much for his mother’s slumping shoulders. The crown of thorns sat on his temples, though there was no blood. The thorns caught on Mary’s veil just like the baby’s fingers. To top it off, a crowd surrounded the macabe trio, arms and accompanying stable animals overflowing with valuable gifts. They watched the distress before them with expressions of vacant devotion. 

If he hadn’t been listening to Professor Twinton himself, Thomas could have easily assumed the whole thing was supposed to be some kind of tasteless parody of the night at the inn. Something about it was just too disturbing to be considered genuine. He averted his gaze to the space above Lord Grantham and the Professor’s heads. He didn’t feel compelled to look at the rest.

\---

“It can’t be that bad,” Baxter softly protested at dinner.

“Believe me, it is,” he ate a spoonful of lamb stew, trying to focus on the warmth and the savory taste instead of returning to his mental image of the Holy Mother and her two woebegotten sons. “I’m not looking forward to serving meal after meal next to it.”

“It is unique,” Mrs. Hughes contributed. “Though I have to say...I’m no great fan either.”

“We don’t know where they’re going to put it,” Bates spoke sagely from Thomas’s right. “It might not be in the dining room at all.”

It was Bates’s way of saying “Stop making a fuss about it,” without actually doing so. Thomas took the opportunity to lightly reinforce the hierarchy that ruled the downstairs - he’d spent most of his life trying to get to the top of it, after all.

“His Lordship did not seem very keen during the presentation,” he acquiesced. “But it is new. And valuable.” As butler, his words were supposed to be final.

Bates twitched his eyebrows vaguely upwards - whether that was a demonstration of submission to Thomas’s input or annoyance was up to Thomas to decide. But judging by the way Anna was trying to covertly catch her husband’s eye from across the table, it was probably the latter. Anna the peace-keeper.

\---

“Her ladyship is overwhelmed, apparently,” John got into bed very gently for a man of his stature. “She’s already planning a fundraiser for the benefit of the college that Twilton man works for.”

“Well, it was very kind of them to return it,” Anna rolled over to face her husband. “Someone else may have just said ‘To the winner goes the spoils’ and have done with it. And she loves art, so.”

“I’m not sure what they’d be the winner of,” John smiled mischievously. “Given the state of it.”

“John Bates!” she mocked sounding scandalized. “You  _ do _ hate the thing.”

There was the quietest rustling noise from the small adjoining room, and they both quickly hushed. And waited. And when it was obvious their son was still asleep, they continued.

“Of course,” he whispered. “It’s hideous.”

“Then why stir the pot at supper tonight?” she whispered back, meeting his eyes in the low light. “Things aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be, so why make trouble?”

John shrugged, leaning back on his pillow. She could just barely make out his expression in the low, semi-steady light of the unshaded gas lamp. There was the occasional, comforting whiff of kerosene. It made her think of lying close to her husband, warm, and safe.

“Old habits,” he simply said. “All I did was say they might not put it in the dining room.”

“What you said,” Anna lightly, almost playfully admonished him, “was that they were being rather ridiculous about the whole thing. You know how easy Thomas used to take offense.”

“Yes, but the idea of being on eternal eggshells around him is...it’s too much.”

“Still,” she said, reaching over to turn the knob of the gas lamp and snuff the wick. “He’s always trying. It’s the least you could do to try some, too.”

She waited in the darkness to feel John’s hand in hers, and she was not disappointed.

\---

The triptych didn’t even last a whole week in the dining room. Thomas and Andy had been privy to the whole ordeal. On Sunday, Lady Mary had come into the dining room for luncheon. She gave the triptych an up-down look that would have made the finest of English society wither in their silk undergarments.

“Mama,” she spoke cooley, “What in heaven is that?”

“It’s ours, dear. It was apparently donated to a London college.”

“If it was donated, why do we have it?”

“They decided we should have it back.”

“Well, why didn’t we have it in the first place?” Mary asked her questions absently as she took her seat at the table.

On Tuesday, Lord Grantham received much the same in the way of questionnaire, but from Tom and Isobel, who was visiting for dinner. 

“How valuable is it?”

“Hard to say, really, but we know it’s worth some money.”

“Good of them to give it back.”

“Yes...according to them, it was stolen, or gifted and forgotten about. But I can’t find a record of any such thing anywhere. I was going to ask our librarian...”

On Wednesday, Master George and Miss Sybbie wandered into the dining room while Nanny was talking with Thomas about the easiest way to get a message to the laundress (the Nanny in question was not pleased with his response, which was to bring it to the laundress directly). Their arctic conversation was interrupted by screeches and cries as Sybbie and George promptly melted into the various stages of emotional hysteria.

“It’s looking at us!” Sybbie sobbed, and George was too far gone even for words.

“Hush, hush, it’s just an old painting,” Nanny consoled them, one arm around each wailing child. But even she seemed to be giving the triptych surreptitious glances, as if trying to convince herself the painting wasn’t really all that bad, honestly.

By Thursday, the decision had been made.

“Granny wouldn’t have liked it,” Lady Mary decreed.

“If we lived and died by what that woman liked, we would still be wearing buckram bonnets,” Lady Cora muttered under her breath, but loud enough for Thomas to hear.

“It mustn’t be left to live in the dining room, mama.”

“Well, dear,” Cora’s patience was sorely tried. “Where do you propose we put it? I don’t want the trouble of putting it away somewhere hard to reach - remember, the fundraiser is coming up soon. We should still be able to display it.”

Mary’s eyes found Thomas’s, and he personally felt he did a very good job not letting the sinking feeling in his chest migrate up to his facial expression.

“Mama,” Mary was grace and deference. “I believe I have an idea.”

\---

Thomas was doing some late night odds and ends in his pantry. The light was comfortably low and warm from the lamp affixed the wall, and the air was just cool enough to be livable. The stones of the abbey’s exterior soaked up cold weather and snow in particular, positively refrigerating it’s inhabitants in its cavernous interior. Tonight, however, it was welcome. It would have been a completely ordinary and hospitable scenario if the triptych wasn’t set directly behind his desk. Easily sheltered, and easily accessible in a safe place. Lucky Thomas.

Thomas had managed not to get too distracted by the triptych while waiting in the dining room. But now it was impossible. He did his best not to look at it, but every now and then some small detail would catch his attention from the corner of his eye. And it would draw him in, at least a little. The two smaller panels showed disparate scenery - it seemed the only theme they shared was that they were scenes from the bible. He hadn’t examined it too closely, but it appeared that one panel depicted Mary Magdalene washing feet, and the other showed Peter failing to walk on water.

He refocused his attention to the little mantle clock he was attempting to fix. It was a cast-off from one of the third floor bedrooms, a small and relatively inexpensive thing with no big name or story attached to it. Still, he made sure to use measured care as he attempted to calibrate it’s inner mechanisms. And in this small moment that he had to himself, he got to think about Richard. The letter he’d had from him most recently was folded and in the inner pocket of his jacket; safe. 

He was looking forward to settling into bed and thinking about the contents of the letter he would send back - of signing carefully “ _ Love, T. Barrow _ .” They only used first initials and last names to preserve deniable plausibility. “Richard Ellis” was fairly damning, but “R. Ellis”? Rachel. Ruth, or Rose. An easy lie, in theory. 

The sounds of a slowing night came from the kitchen; pots and pans clattering every now and then, running water, the chatter between Mrs. Patmore and Daisy thrumming back and forth like a plucked string. And then the sounds of the evening were punctuated with his name.

“Mr. Barrow?” In actuality, it had been pronounced more like “Baw-waow”, but the “Mister” bit was fairly on the mark.

He looked up and gave a warm smile. “Hullo, Johnny. Or is it...Mr. Bates?”

Johnny was sleepily arranged in the doorway, eyes weighing heavy in his head. “Johnny,” the little boy yawned his affirmation. “M’name’s Johnny...” 

He shuffled into the room, positively tripping over the slightly uneven parts of the floor.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Thomas waved at the sitting chair he’d added to the corner of the pantry. It wasn’t particularly plush, but it would do for a small and sleepy child.

“Where’s your mum?”

Johnny didn’t answer, he just hauled himself onto the chair and promptly cast off into what Thomas hoped was a good dream. He shook his head. Nerves of steel, that one. No doubt doing his father proud. Thomas wasn’t sure how Bates would feel about Johnny being there - things had cooled between them markedly, but they had yet to be reclassified as friendly. But there was never a child Thomas had wished ill-will, and Johnny was no different.

He went back to fiddling with the clock, and did so peacefully for some time.

“Johnny?” the call came from down the hallway, but the boy did not stir. “Johnny?” closer still, and edging towards sounding something like maternal rage.

“In here,” Thomas called, and Anna quickly appeared. “He wandered in a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, terribly sorry,” Anna quietly stole across the room and gathered her son up in her arms. Thomas might have been paranoid, but he imagined she did so rather protectively. 

“It took a while to get Lady Mary ready for bed,” she checked over her son’s sleeping face, avoiding eye contact. “Longer than I was expecting, at any rate.”

He held up a hand dismissively, retreating back into the horologic task before him. “It’s alright.”

“Good night, Mr. Barrow.”

“Good night.”

He listened to her footsteps drawing away, and sighed. He figured almost fifteen years of acid remarks and errant actions took a while to withdraw from a mother’s conscience.

"Is it that easy for her to think so little of me?" he whispered to himself. He’d have to talk about it with Baxter - Phyllis - over tea. How did one deal with the displeasure of a person so rarely displeased? It didn’t give one much time for practice.

The kitchen had gone dormant, and the lights had been switched off except for the hall leading to the stairwell. It was time to turn in, particularly if he was still planning on writing that letter. He stood, stretched, and turned to pick up his jacket. And stopped. He’d almost entirely forgotten about the triptych, but there was no ignoring it. It was splayed before him like an obscene photograph - like the kind the other soldiers used to pass around in France.

He got a little closer. The panel with Peter on it was the arresting agent this time around. Christ floated above the water, terrible looking. Not in an “awesome might” manner, but in a way that reminded the viewer of an angry father. Of Thomas’s father. He shifted uncomfortably, turning his gaze to Peter. It was an untraditionally young presentation of the disciple; his hair and beard were not the withered white usually depicted in this sort of thing. He was sinking into the violent waves, too far from the boat where the other disciples bobbed in safety, and too far from the somewhat lazy-looking hand of Christ. He was going to drown. On the shore, a crowd of people were gathered to watch.

Thomas looked at each of them. He should’ve been going to bed. But he could imagine the spray, the whip of the wind against the faces of the people standing on the rocky beach. The wail of the storm. And there, amidst the crowd, the detailed crush of people - was someone. Someone who looked familiar. He peered carefully.

Something inside of him felt strangled, a kind of electric fear he had never felt before. Not even in the trenches. 

It was him. 

It was his face - he was in the painting.

“No...”

Thomas couldn’t look away, couldn’t move. All he could think to do was raise his hand. It couldn’t be real.

“This isn’t real.”

It was ancient, older than Downton Abbey. He moved his hand forward. Stop. He should stop. 

“Stop...stop!”

Against every fiber of will in his being, his fingers brushed the canvas.

And Thomas disappeared.

And when he came back, it was the spring of 1912.


	3. The Shifting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas ends up in 1912 and some change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Brief depictions of war violence, talk-based conversion therapy, and suicide.

** _ Spring, 1912 _ **

\---

The only way to describe it was like waking up without ever having been asleep. Not knowing you weren't awake until you suddenly are; presence and absence. There was nothing, except for maybe the smallest degree of awareness - a shadow of thought. And then, everything came into focus as if a curtain were falling to reveal some miraculous wonder trapped in a glass case.

Thomas blinked. It was morning, the bright light seeping through the small but high windows of the servant's hall. He was seated in the middle of the dining table, and across from him sat William.

"What in the _ bloody _ hell is going on?"

Then William bloody Mason, who should have been over a bloody decade rotting in the bloody ground, glanced up from his otherwise delightful-looking toast and eggs and said, "...um...breakfast?"

The chatter at the table met a slow and painful end. As conversation subsided, Thomas felt the sudden pressure of astonished stares meet him from all sides. He evaluated each one. Anna, white mob cap firmly pinned to her head. Gwen - what was _ she _ doing here? - eyes narrowed in plain dislike. Mrs. Hughes, tea frozen halfway to her lips. Bates, looking sour. Daisy was a statue at the far corner of the hall, clutching a tray to her chest, demeanor fraught with rabbit-like trepidation. Hallboys and parlormaids whose names had faded from his mind like echoes on their departure punctuated the throng. They all looked... _ young _. The wear and indications of time had been scrubbed from their faces - wrinkles ironed smooth and grey hairs refurbished to their original colors.

"Pardon me?" Mr. Carson's voice rumbled from the head of the table. Thunder before the torrential rain.

"Have you lost all sense of decorum, Thomas? Or your mind, perhaps?" The sonorous tone was sounding more and more clipped, gathering heat. "Because that is the only reason I could think of that would cause you to expose us all to such senseless vulgarity over breakfast."

"...._ Sorry _?" Thomas managed to choke out.

"Meet me in the pantry immediately after breakfast," the orders were practically barked, and for a moment Thomas had the dizzying sense of being back in the army.

"...Yes...Mr. Carson."

Daisy scuttled back into the safety of the kitchen. Everyone returned to their food in silence - the only thing to talk about now was what had just happened, and no one was bound to do that with Carson and Thomas amongst them. Thomas himself was still sitting in a daze, a simple expression of horror on his face that his - apparently - half-eaten helping of eggs was getting a very good look at. He did not remember eating them. Or waking up and coming down the stairs, picking a seat. 

He'd gone mad. That was the only explanation. William kept shooting him glances across the table that all but confirmed the other footman had the same thought. Everyone else set their attention pointedly elsewhere.

Then the Crawley family started ringing bells on the board, and Carson stood. Breakfast was over. The petulant chimes barely cut through the routine of mental gymnastics running at break-neck speed through Thomas's brain, and he remained seated while everyone around him jerked themselves into productivity. They all made swift exits, but William lingered.

"Chin up," William whispered. "It might not be all that bad, will it?"

Thomas just stared at him. _ You're dead. You're DEAD. Why are you alive? _

William shifted from one foot to the other - he was only ever graceful when on duty upstairs, and somehow managed to save all of his country-born oafishness for the servant's hall. Thomas was reminded of this now.

"Well," he was uncomfortable with Thomas's stunned silence, interpreting it as a hostile reaction to his unsolicited platitude. "I were only trying to help." And then he was gone, too, off to assist the Crawleys who were making their way down to the breakfast buffet.

Thomas slowly, slowly got up. He took in the servant’s hall - it looked very much the same. Maybe this was an elaborate hallucination? The flue of the stove had backed up and the poisoned air was killing him - that was another option. 

“Thomas!” That would be Carson, then. He stepped carefully towards the direction of the pantry, as if the bottoms of his elastic-lined shoes were made of glass. He tugged absently at his livery - green, stripes, brass buttons. A footman’s uniform. His hand - _ his hand _! The kid-skin glove he’d used to cover his blighty was gone, as was the blighty itself. Smooth skin stretched over the bones and sinew where the bullet had pierced him. He flexed his hand - full range of motion. He felt the underside of his smallest finger - it registered sensation. It wasn’t numb. He was enraptured with his miraculous recovery when he made it to the pantry.

Carson cleared his throat. The man was drawn up to his full height, a puffed-up owl. Bushy brows arched in exasperation. The sun coming through the windows was blinding from Thomas’s perspective, and cast Carson’s stout figure into a contradictory kind shadow.

“What is your explanation?” Carson’s eyes lingered on Thomas, who realized his hand was still held aloft in the air. He let it drop loosely to his side. What did he say in this scenario? _ Hello, Mr. Carson, I think I’m dead _? It suddenly occurred to him - where had O’Brien been? If he was dead and this was some kind of hell, surely some version of her would be there, too. The thought was almost enough to make him laugh.

“Is something amusing?” Carson’s tone was one of the darkest Thomas had ever heard. His trusty servant’s blank must be coming loose.

“No.” _ This is a dream _.

“Are you ill, then?” The question was asked sarcastically.

“I-I might be...Mr. Carson.”

The answer seemed to surprise them both.

“You are?” The concern in Carson’s face was not for Thomas - it was for breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea, and dinner. The serving of which now fell into the hands of two people instead of three. 

“I woke up not feeling myself,” Thomas took up the half-lie slowly, “...and I think it’s rather affecting me.”

Carson seemed to chew on this. “Are you well enough to polish the silver?”

It figured that even in this strange hallucination, chores would manage to fill in the gaps of time he could have been taking for himself.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Then start undertaking the Elkington candelabras - her ladyship asked for them to be set out for Mrs. Crawley and Mr. Matthew’s dinner on Friday. I will unlock everything for you and check-in after breakfast is over.”

Of course. William was reanimated from beyond the grave, so why not Matthew Crawley?

“Yes, Mr. Carson.” 

He supposed if this really was a dream, he didn’t have to be so pliable. He could have just walked right up the stairs and gotten into his bed. But before this realization had fully solidified, he was already mixing the silver polish in the servant’s hall.

“Do you need anything?”

He jumped.

“No...I’m fine. Thank you, Daisy.”

She was holding a teapot in a cozy. She looked positively infantile. She proferred him the contents. “Tea?”

“Not now.”

“I suppose it’s gone all cold,” she frowned, lifting the ceramic lid to check inside.

Thomas could feel the last threads of his composure fraying apart. “I need to go polish the silver,” he muttered, gathering up his work materials. Maybe Daisy being his shadow was another kind of torment. Surely she had never been this childlike? But he supposed his unconscious mind had to be pulling it’s material from somewhere. She had carried a passionate torch for him - one he hadn’t exactly done anything to extinguish.

And then, something started changing. Something he couldn’t describe, even to himself. He paused.

“Are you alright?” Daisy asked.

It came on quickly, like the involuntary tense before a sneeze. 

A ** _shifting_ ** _ . _

And the world was ending. Sudden flashes of light lit the sky, the screams of whizzbangs and the roars of mortars making the ground quake - a familiar sound. A sound he could never forget. A sound he thought he would never hear again.

“Hurry up, Barrow!” 

Mud sucked on his shoes, trying to feast it’s way up his ankles. The weight of the stretcher balanced on his shoulder was pressing him further into the ground, and he slipped. Tumbling face first into the blood-thickened mire, it coated everything from his head to his toes. It was already seeping into the linen shirt under his uniform. And the _ smell _ -

“Hurry!” Hands grabbed at his shoulders, trying to put him back on his feet.

“No, stop!” he cried, “Stop,_ stop _!” Something was terribly, terribly wrong. He needed to get somewhere, anywhere, away from here, and figure out what was happening.

“No stopping!” Sergeant Piccard was shouting from behind him. “Fix your pannier later, just keep going!” He remembered Sergeant Piccard - he had a huge mustache, and the other bearers called him “Lord Kitchener” as a joke. He was in charge of them, their default leader. At least he was, until - 

There was an almost-silent _ whizzzp _, and Piccard’s body crumpled on top of him. 

** _Shifting_ ** **.**

“And how long have you struggled with these inclinations, Mr. Barrow?”

“STOP-!” But he wasn’t in the trenches any longer, he was sitting in a clean and formal-looking office.

“...I beg your pardon?” The man sitting at the desk in front of him was a model of confusion and concern. But then, so Thomas.

“Where am I?!” He scrambled out of the chair he’d been sitting in - he had to be upright, had to be on his feet. “_ Where the bloody hell am I?! _”

“B-Berkelley Clinic,” the man stammered, and suddenly a name came to Thomas.

“Dr. Grant...,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “...I must be losing my mind. I must be.” He caught sight of his hands - the kid-skin glove had returned.

“M-many men in your situation feel much the same,” Grant looked and sounded frightened. “Are you - are you quite alright? I know you’ve said you’re short on time, but if you could sit down I’m sure I can get to the root of your sexual inversion. Isn’t that why you are here?”

“No,” Thomas took a step back, shaking his head. “No.”

“Please, sit,” Dr. Grant implored. He was a seedy-looking man, with sallow skin and limp hair. “I can ring and get you a cup of tea, if you like. Settle you down?”

“No. I’m leaving,” he turned towards the door.

** _Shifting._ **

He was fading away and he knew he was. It was too late to stop it. The water lapped at his ears, lukewarm. His clothes stuck to him like a sopping second skin. He couldn’t open his eyes - couldn’t move. It was all too heavy. His arms ached and burned in a peculiar and lancing, but it was getting less and less noticeable the longer he thought about it. But how could he be experiencing _ this _ again? He remembered thinking it wasn’t going to be like this. Being surprised. What was happening? He needed to get out, get away, find out.... _ .find out _....

** _Shifting_ ** **.**

“Step back,” the police officer spat. “Get with the others.” 

Then a rough push against his shoulder sent him stumbling back from iron bars and into a steaming crowd of other men. The smell of fear in the holding cell was suffocating, warm and anxious breath hung in the air. Coated his skin. There were too many men, too many people, all too close together. Practically climbing on top of each other. Crying. Whispering. He couldn’t move, could barely stand, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think -

“They’ll let us out,” came a voice from the left. “They _ have _to let us out.”

“It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright.”

A cacophony of strangers, strangers who might as well have been him.

“Be quiet, already!”

“Have you seen a tall man, blond hair, glasses, wearing a green waistcoat?” 

“Stuff it!”

“I think Harry got away...god, I hope he really did.”

“Margie can’t know.”

“Get off of me.”

“What am I going to do?”

“I can’t breathe!”

“What am I going to tell Helen?”

“We’ll be out by morning.”

** _Shifting_ ** **.**

He was back at breakfast, and William was once again alive and across from him. He grabbed the edge of the table. If he held on tight enough, maybe he wouldn’t go anywhere. Anna, Bates, Mrs. Hughes, Gwen - they all ate and chatted and greeting the morning like nothing was wrong, and never had been. Just an ordinary spring morning, waiting for the day to get underway.

“Why am I here again?” he whispered, shattered. William gave him a cow-eyed look of confusion.. 

“What d’ya say?” he spoke around a mouthful of food.

“The mail has arrived,” Carson settled into his seat at the head of the table. “Anna....Mrs. Hughes....,” he doled out the envelopes as he spoke. “George....Gwen....and William.” 

Something was itching at the back of Thomas’s mind - he gripped the table harder, until he realized it was not the phenomena that had taken hold of him. It was a memory. That’s what this was.

William tore into his letter. Daisy came around to collect the empty plates from the center of the table - the toast was decimated. Thomas watched as the all moving parts began to form a picture.

_ What’s that William? _

“What’s that, William?” she was friendly this morning. 

The smile on William’s face - the brightening of his eyes - was unmistakable. He was in love, and her interest fueled his chipper buoyancy. 

_ Just a letter from me mum. She’s gone to see the doctor again. _

“Just a letter from me mum,” he explained. “She’s gone to see the doctor again.”

_ Anything for me, Mr. Carson? _

“Anything for me, Mr. Carson?” Thomas’s voice scratched on his ears.

_ Not today. _

“Not today,” Carson’s voice held a curl of annoyance. A very familiar curl.

“Excuse me,” Thomas stood up and did all but run from the table, ignoring all questions and attempts to stop him. They were memories, all of them. All of terrible things.

The first death he witnessed in the war. The therapy sessions that came with the fees he paid to “choose his own path”. The dark and desperate day in the attic bathroom. The holding cell the night Richard rescued him, after the raid of the club. This morning.

He burst into the courtyard.

This was the morning he realized, truly, that things were over between him and Philip. If having his letters thrown into the fire and being humiliated wasn’t enough to convince him, the wall of silence that was erected between them afterwards certainly had. Philip had religiously written to him once a month under a fake name, and Thomas wrote once a month in turn. He’d told himself he didn’t care anymore, that Philip meant nothing. It was over. But deep down he still expected that letter to come in the post, and wipe away all the ugliness from when they last saw one another. He was ready to apologize, to make appeals and compromises.

Then the day when the expected letter would have arrived - ideally overflowing with soft words and assurances - there was nothing. And when Thomas watched as William opened his letter, mooning so openly after Daisy, there was an embarrassingly large part of him that wanted to cry with the unfairness of it all.

And O’Brien hadn’t been there - she was off in London, on an errand with her ladyship. He’d sat in the courtyard and smoked by himself, swallowing the misery that made itself a home in his throat.

Thomas broke into a run. 

He had to get away, far away. Maybe it wouldn’t catch up to him then, and pull him forward to wherever he was going next. Maybe he would stay. _Faster. Faster._ _Farther, farther._

_Shifting_. _Shifting. Shifting. Shifting. Shifting. _**_Shifting._** **_Shifting._**

Good morning hurry up step back get with the others what do you think you are doing are you ready to begin it will only last for a second AND THEN Spring Summer Spring Autumn Summer AND THEN servant’s hall Flanders London attics York AND THEN fear fear fear fear fear and on and on and again and again and again again again again again -

Good morning hurry up step back get with the others what do you think you are doing are you ready to begin it will only last for a second AND THEN Spring Summer Spring Autumn Summer AND THEN servant’s hall Flanders London attics York AND THEN fear fear fear fear fear and on and on and again and again and again again again again again - **Good morning hurry up step back get with the others what do you think you are doing are you ready to begin it will only last for a second AND THEN Spring Summer Spring Autumn Summer AND THEN servant’s hall Flanders London attics York AND THEN fear fear fear fear fear and on and on and again and again and again again again again again -**

**GoodmorninghurryupstepbackgetwiththeotherswhatdoyouthinkyouaredoingareyoureadytobeginitwillonlylastforasecondANDTHENSpringSummerSpringAutumnSummerANDTHENservant’shallFlandersLondonatticsYorkANDTHENfearfearfearfearfearandonandonandagainandagainandagainagainagainagainagain -**

** _GoodmorninghurryupstepbackgetwiththeotherswhatdoyouthinkyouaredoingareyoureadytobeginitwillonlylastforasecondANDTHENSpringSummerSpringAutumnSummerANDTHENservant’shallFlandersLondonatticsYorkANDTHENfearfearfearfearfearandonandonandagainandagainandagainagainagainagainagainGoodmorninghurryupstepbackgetwiththeotherswhatdoyouthinkyouaredoingareyoureadytobeginitwillonlylastforasecondANDTHENSpringSummerSpringAutumnSummerANDTHENservant’shallFlandersLondonatticsYorkANDTHENfearfearfearfearfearandonandonandagainandagainandagainagainagainagainagain -_ **

** _Againagainagainagainagain -_ **

**Againagainagain -**

Again, again, again -

Again, again -

And again.


	4. 1928

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in 1928, people are left scrambling in the wake of an unexpected absence.

_ Late October, 1928 _

Anna liked getting up early. In theory, because Lady Mary usually didn't take her breakfast until eight or half past, Anna could sleep in a decent while. It only took ten minutes to ready herself, five minutes to pack up Johnny's things for nanny, and then all three members of the Bates family were ready to take a ten minute walk to work. It wouldn't take long. Most mornings as it was, they ate a simple breakfast at home. It was easy to get to Downton with just enough time for John to stow Johnny in the nursery before attending Lord Grantham, and for Anna to grab Lady Mary's breakfast tray.

But Anna liked the quiet of a young morning. When she was a housemaid, getting up at six o'clock meant that her roommate was getting up at six as well. Dressing, dining, working, and sleeping side by side - never any space, never any time that could be inhabited by a single individual. So she started training herself to get up at five instead, and listened from under her covers or huddled in her chair as the hallboys rustled their way down the attic hall at six, rousing everyone else.

It was a time for thinking. She tried not to think about work - over the years, the contents of her early morning sessions had consisted of a range of topics. John's imprisonment. William at war. How to politely turn down Mr. Molseley's invitations for walks on half days (mercifully, an easily solved mental puzzle). The only time she hadn't followed her routine was when she was in prison - she slept a lot, then. Tried to sleep her way through as much of it as they would let her. For a time, in the morning, she thought about prison after her release. 

Now, Johnny was the topic en vogue. And she suspected he would be for the rest of her life. But today, she was thinking about Thomas Barrow. He’d seemed odd the previous night. When they’d left, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been...well, cold wasn’t the right word. But when she saw where Johnny had wound up, all she could think of were scars from old wounds. Thomas was a different person now, or was trying to be. But what if he fell back into old habits? She felt she could take that chance with herself, but not her child. He was kind to the children of his employer, but would he be kind to the child of his staff member?

Anna shifted carefully out of bed, making sure to let John be still - he was such a light sleeper, it was almost humorous. She slipped out of her nightgown and into the black silk uniform she'd arranged for herself the night before. Stockings and garter belt, cast-off silk step-in, sensible shoes. It was almost cold enough out to switch to her woolen union suit. She settled into them, pleased at the comforting feeling of familiarity. 

She checked her hair quickly in the mirror - it was a more efficient version of what the fashion mags called "the new look." It didn't need much tending too, especially since she didn't need to wash it today. And besides, she only needed to look presentable - not glamorous. This morning, the early-rise was not a product of self indulgence, but of necessity. Lady Mary and Mr. Branson had a meeting with some insistent local councilors, so she needed to be ready earlier than usual. Anna wrapped herself in her coat, arranging her hat carefully.

She padded quietly into the adjoining room where Johnny slept on his cot. She leaned on the door frame, and watched her hard-won child. He was still so small - his open palms had never known anything but playtime and kisses. His blue eyes were closed and fluttering in dream. He was curled under the blanket in a way that reminded her of when he was an infant in arms. Anna smiled to herself as she packed his outfit for the day into a small leather bag.

It was an early start for her, but John was sleeping in because he was due to catch a train to London later that morning. He had an appointment with a solicitor who didn't keep weekend hours - about their London property. His lordship gave him permission to miss Friday, overnight at the Grantham House in London, and come back the next morning. To save him a trip back and forth to the big house, Anna was going to take Johnny in with her.

Carefully, she gathered him in her arms. She kept him wrapped in the blanket he slept in - with any luck, he would stay asleep for the whole walk to the abbey, and settle right into the cot put aside for him in the nursery. He made a small noise of awareness as she adjusted her grip.

"Shhhh...," she soothed on her way out the door, closing it gently behind her.

The gravel crunched under her feet in a musical way, and the trees shivered in the wind. Their autumn coats of many colors were halfway shed - a little more rain and they'd be done in entirely. The birds were still singing, and the smell in the air was damp but pleasant. The aroma was a round and earthy one. Johnny stirred against her shoulder. He wouldn't sleep his way to the nursery, then. But Anna actually felt a small thrill of contentment - it meant she could talk to him before starting her duties, and she couldn't imagine a better start to her day.

"Good morning my sweet," she whispered into her son's temple, giving him a lingering kiss. "How was your sleep?"

Johnny nestled into her shoulder before coming to full awareness. "Mummy...?" he yawned. "Morning, mummy."

"We have a busy day ahead of us," she told him matter-of-factly, easing up her volume and energy in a way Johnny would soon match when he shook off the last of his drowsiness. "Lady Mary has an important meeting, right after breakfast. And then she's running into Ripon to make arrangements for this year's livestock show."

"That's good," he was sounding more alert now, holding himself up of his own strength. He looked around, vacantly confused. "Da?"

"Your father also has an errand to run," she said. "He's going to London. We said goodbye to him last night before bed. Remember?"

"I guess so," so he wasn't wholly with it, then. Anna smirked.

"Let's play a game, make the walk go faster."

"Yes! A game, please!" Johnny was alive with excitement. He seemed ready to start wiggling his way out of her arms.

"And so polite, at that," she mused. "Alright. I'm thinking of an animal. Its big-"

"Doggy!"

"No, let me finish, now. It's not a dog. But that was a good guess. It's bigger than a dog, and comes in many colors. Brown, black, red, and white."

"This is black," Johnny pawed at the lapel of her overcoat, a thick dyed wool.

"You're right, it is black! It's not the animal I'm thinking of, though. The animal I'm thinking of sometimes has big horns, and a tail, and walks on all fours."

"Rabbit!"

"Not quite-

"A rabbit, mummy!" He was looking past her in the direction they'd come, pointing with enthusiasm. "Look," Johnny implored, transfixed.

Anna glanced behind to appease him, and promptly crunched to a stop. There was, indeed, a rabbit on the path. There were many, many, many rabbits on the path. The ground teemed with them. That alone would have been odd enough - but among all of the small creatures, not a single one moved. Little marble statuettes.

"I want a rabbit," Johnny babbled. "They're my favorite."

Anna didn't respond - where had they come from? And then another thought - how long have they been there?

"Odd," she finally said. "Let's hurry up, Johnny." And she set off at a much brisker pace than when they'd started.

"They're following us," Johnny whispered.

Anna flipped him around so he faced forward in her arms. "Keep a lookout," she said. "Tell me when you see Downton." It was a variation on another game they played on walks. She didn't want to hear updates about what was happening behind them, harmless as rabbits might be.

Very, very strange rabbits. She resisted the instinct to check behind her or run, settling instead on a determined half-trot. The primary sound was the grind of gravel underneath, but if she listened hard enough she thought she could hear something that sounded like soft, tiny footfalls overlapping and building into a crescendo.

_ Just rabbits. Many rabbits. _

Full moon, new moon, something must be about. And just because something was about didn't mean she had to pay attention to it. She kept her eyes forward for the remainder of the walk, fearing for some reason a soft brush of fur against her ankles.

_ Just rabbits. _

They arrived in the courtyard and Anna opened the servants door - they left it unlocked in the morning for deliveries, usually. The delivery men knew to knock. And as the door closed she finally chanced a glance behind her - not a rabbit in sight. 

She stared at the closed door for a moment. Listening. 

_ It’s nothing. _

Shaking her head, Anna finagled her hat and coat onto the rack by the door, switching Johnny from arm to arm. 

No one was really up yet - Daisy and a scullery maid were banging about, getting breakfast ready. Daisy had been taking the helm for larger and larger projects, more and more frequently. With Mrs. Patmore winding down towards retirement to her bed and breakfast, Daisy’s capabilities were proving strong enough to step up in her place.

"Morning," she greeted, trying not to sound shaken.

"Morning yourself," Daisy smiled. The maid, a shy young thing named Polly, simply inclined her head and kept about her business.

Anna couldn't help but stop. "The strangest thing happened just now," she said.

"Rabbits," Johnny added, helpfully. "Lots and lots of rabbits, Miss Daisy."

"Yes," Anna muttered. "They followed us, I think. For a while."

She measured Daisy's against her own - was she truly being silly, or was there something to her unease? Daisy, however, looked absently amused.

"That's a story," she said, counting out eggs. "How many were there, you reckon?"

"Oh..." the frozen swarm swam in her mind’s eye. "At hundred, at least. Probably more."

"I should tell the gamekeeper," Daisy nodded sagely. She'd taken to doing that since Polly's arrival. Anna suspected one part of Daisy liked having an impressionable follower, having often been one herself. And the other part of her was paying penance for the Ivy debacle.

"I'm sure he'll want to set lots of snares," she continued.

"Yes, certainly," Anna quailed a little. She personally didn't like rabbit very much. She didn't fancy the thought of rabbit stew, rabbit pie, from here to eternity. Or even looking at the skinned bodies that would be roasted and go for dinner upstairs. And especially not those rabbits. 

"I'm going to put Johnny upstairs - see you at breakfast."

"Tarra," Daisy refocused her attention on cracking the eggs into a large bowl, separating the yolks from the whites. "Now, Polly, the trick of eggs florentine is..."

The culinary instruction faded from her ears as Anna ascended the stairs. "Have a good day," she told her son as they made good time to the nursery. "Be good for nanny, and play nice with Miss Sybbie and Master George-”  
“Caroline?”

“Miss Caroline, too.”

"I will," he promised.

Anna smiled, but inside she worried. It seemed such a strange experiment, at times, to raise her son alongside the future beneficiaries of Downton. She knew she had permission and it wasn't an inconvenience, but she could still remember Nanny West. If Sybbie was treated so unfairly because her father was common, what chance did Johnny have against a similarly prejudiced adult? Maybe the shared-background of his parentage would protect him. He was a product of two servants, not star-crossed class-crossing lovers.

Anna knew the Crawleys to be generous and fair - but there would always be an inescapable friction. Her son was a have-not growing up in an environment of opulence. To a certain kind of mind, that would belie him the opportunities and social graces he could be afforded. What happened when Master George went away to school, and Johnny had to put in for a scholarship to get a decent education past grade nine? What happened when young love's first crush drew him to Miss Caroline or Miss Sybbie? Would Johnny grow up with Master George, and then become valet to his nursery-mate? Would they even need valets by that time? She shook the questions from her mind. Best to put them away and look at them tomorrow morning.

She quietly entered the nursery - the other children were still fast asleep, and nanny was getting a start on mending child-sized stockings in the corner. They silently greeted one another with gracious nods.

"There you are," she whispered, tucking Johnny into the extra cot in the corner. "Have a good day, love."

"Bye, mummy."

"Goodbye, darling."

She gave nanny another just-as-gracious nod on her way out. They didn't know how to interact with each other. Anna suspected that while the other women held no hard feelings, she had similar views about the precarious toeing of the invisible lines between classes. Forward-thinking as her employers may be, it was doubtless there were vestiges of the old hidden in the practices of the new. Nothing ever changed immediately. Old ways died slow, slow deaths and took as much with them as they could manage on their way.

Anna scraped one last reassuring look at Johnny before leaving the nursery - nanny was tending to him now, offering him a stuffed animal to keep him company until the other children woke. Good. She made a hasty break now for the servants stairwell, picking up speed as she trotted down the stairs. Time was of importance, now. She had just enough time to eat breakfast with the other staff before bringing Lady Mary her tray.

She settled into the spot she usually ate supper, the corner where the upper servants usually congregated. She wanted to make sure she started the day out right with Thomas - she felt a little odd about her abruptness the night before. If she greeted everyone with warmth and cheer, maybe it would soothe any invisible wounds they’d been nursing.

The others were up now, shaking sleep from themselves and sidling down in pairs. The maids, Ada and Florence. The hallboy Reggie was missing his shadow, Albert, but was nevertheless still scuttling about wrapping up pre-breakfast chores as best he could before everyone sat down. His arms full of firewood, he brushed past Polly as she started carrying in trays from the kitchen - toast, with some of Mrs. Patmore’s preserves. 

“Could I have some tea, please, Polly? When you can?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve got a kettle on now,” the girl always sounded timid. “Have it ready in a moment.” She hurried back to the kitchen to grab more.

Mrs. Hughes came bustling in from the courtyard, detouring into her sitting room to remove her hat and coat.

“Good morning, Anna,” she greeted her and took her seat as Polly set down a platter of eggs (_ not _ eggs florentine), and filled Anna’s cup with tea.

“Morning, Mrs. Hughes,” Anna lifted her cup and tested the temperature - still scalding. She set the it gently on the saucer. “Did you see any...rabbits on your way in?”

“...No,” the older woman was bemused. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason. No breakfast at the cottage, then?”

“Not today,” Mrs. Hughes settled into her seat. She gave Anna a look that held a hint of mischief, “And I’m sure if Mr. Carson really wants something, he’ll be able to fix it himself.”

Baxter wandered into the hall then, looking slightly perplexed. She scanned the hall from one side to the other.

“Everything alright, Miss Baxter?” Anna asked, all pleasant.

Baxter looked mildly startled, then smiled in her way that was wan but genuinely kind at the same time. 

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she answered, taking her own place at the table. “I just haven’t seen Mr. Barrow yet this morning.”

“He’ll be down soon, I’m sure,” Mrs. Hughes inspected the food on the table. “Or he’d better start working on an apology - we can’t start eating without him.”

Baxter looked like she had something she wanted to say, but was sitting on her words.

“Is this everyone?” Anna had taken in the numbers. “Andy isn’t joining us?”

Baxter shook her head, “Daisy said yesterday he was helping Mr. Mason with a cow that’s dropped her calf - he’s been nursing the little thing all night and she wanted to let him sleep. He’ll be about before upstairs breakfast.”

Albert, the other hallboy, finally ventured to the table. Other than the still-absent Thomas, he was the last to arrive.

“Albert,” Mrs. Hughes directed. At the sound of his name, the boy snapped to attention. “Run upstairs and tell Mr. Barrow we are missing his company.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hughes,” and Albert was off in a flash, basking in the fortune of having received an extra errand instead of a public verbal lashing. So now they had nothing to do but wait. Anna decided to fill the time with conversation.

“So, when Mrs. Patmore officially retires, are we going to start calling Daisy ‘Mrs. Fox’?” Anna asked lightly.

“I don’t think she would like that very much,” Baxter laughed a little.

“You could always ask her what she wants to be called,” Mrs. Hughes reminded them. “It’s my assessment that we’re fairly liberal here when it comes to naming traditions.”

“Well, yes,” Anna conceded, “But it would be interesting to make a wager one way or the other.”

“I will be called ‘_ Daisy _,’ thank you very much,” Daisy came from behind them, pretending to sound cross but smiling all the same. “None of that ‘Missus’ palaver. Very old fashioned.” She eyed the table, ensuring that Polly’s job was up to snuff. She seemed satisfied.

“I agree, Daisy,” Anna nodded.

“You’ve become someone who makes a habit of racing against the standard,” Mrs. Hughes observed.

“And I intend to keep it that way,” Daisy responded before going back to take her seat at the kitchen staff’s table, where Polly was setting out their tableware. They chatted idly about the schedule for the day and the plans they’d laid to ensure it was carried off efficiently until the sound of quick feet interrupted them.

Albert was in the doorway, trying not to look or sound out of breath after running up to the attics and back down again. He was not being successful.

“Mr. Barrow is on his way down then, I trust?” Mrs. Hughes asked.

Albert shook his head urgently, gasping for words. The air in the hall solidified in the vicinity of the upper servants - a Bermuda Triangle of tension was quickly forming between Mrs. Hughes, Baxter, and Anna. The under servants looked confused, but registered the change.

"What is it, Albert?"

"Well, I...I...can't seem to find Mr. Barrow," the hallboy sputtered, and stood awkwardly before the gathered crowd. He was very young, and the nature of his job was engineered for anonymity - even to other servants. Though Anna thought she'd seen him and Polly making some kind of “eye” at one another. So maybe not _ entirely _ anonymous.

"Have you checked the pantry?" Anna asked him.

Albert nodded once, taken aback by the sudden serious nature of the three women. "Yes, Mrs. Bates," the younger servants - the ones barely out of school - had taken to calling her by her last name.

"And upstairs?" Baxter interjected. Her worries were plain on her face. She and Anna exchanged a stiff look.

"No! He's nowhere up there, and he likes to wake up on his own, so..." the boy trailed off.

In the midst of everything, the knowledge that Thomas didn't take full advantage of his upper servant privileges was surprising. The Thomas Anna had known as a housemaid, and even as a lady’s maid, would have used every opportunity to remind everyone of his status.

Baxter’s demeanor was now ironclad. "Did you see Mr. Barrow last night?" she asked, looking up and down the table. "Did anyone?"

"I saw him before we left for the cottage," Anna told them. "Said goodnight."

"What time was that?" Mrs. Hughes was standing, poised for action.

"Half-past eleven, most like," Anna responded.

"And no one saw him after?"

They all shared the same thought.

_ I hope I’m not right _.

"His lordship will need to be informed," Mrs. Hughes was grim. “Immediately.”

Daisy poked her head out into the servant’s hall. “Is Mr. Barrow _ still _ not down yet?” she asked incredulously, before taking in everyone’s expressions. “What? What is it?”

**...**

Phyllis had many worries, but one above all others. The police had been called - and she had no intention of heaping one more unease on top of her already substantial pile. She'd noticed Anna, too, had found every excuse to make herself scarce after Mrs. Hughes returned from upstairs with the missive, "Ring the police."

"I'm sorry, milady, I find I'm distracted this morning," she brought a late breakfast to Lady Cora - Daisy and Mrs. Patmore had made some angry noise in the kitchen about needing to "make eggs florentine again" after the first batch had gone cold. And the staff hadn't even been able to enjoy the cold ones for their own meal - the question of Thomas's location hung too urgently on their minds to make too much time for food. Everyone had taken some tea and toast and made do.

_ He wasn't terribly unhappy, was he? _

"As you should be," Lady Cora looked elegant and refined, even in bed. But then, the bed also looked elegant and refined. "I would be worried myself if you weren't!"

"His lordship asked me to inform you that the police have been called. They're going to talk to the family and staff in the library," Phyllis gingerly laid the tray on the plush down comforter Lady Cora nestled under.

"What are they saying downstairs?" Lady Cora started delicately spreading raspberry preserves on half a piece of toast.

_ They're afraid he's dead. _

Phyllis went to the wardrobe and started laying out a sensible outfit for the day - assuming all other appointments were shelved for the time being, something more relaxed was in order until dinner. But still something one could look respectable in - her thoughts solidified around the stern -looking police sergeants. What they knew or didn't know.

"Anna says she saw Mr. Barrow last night," she began, "but no one's seen him since." _ He wouldn't leave without saying anything. He would have told me. _

“I suppose we’ll have to postpone the benefit until we find him,” Cora was talking to herself more than she was talking to Phyllis. “Or perhaps we’ll ask Carson back in the interim. We’ll see what the day brings us.” Then, as if remembering Phyllis was there, she turned her attention from breakfast to her lady’s maid. She smiled.

"We'll organize a search party," Lady Cora's voice was warm and concerned. "I'll enlist the outside staff. Perhaps there will be some additional interest in the village." Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The jam preserves covered the toast from corner to corner.

_ Where are you? _

"Very good idea, milady."

_ Please, please be alright. _

**...**

“...Anna,” Lady Mary observed herself closely in the mirror - rubbing cream into her high cheekbones, fingering a grey hair by her temple. “Papa told me the police are likely to talk to you. The other staff as well, I suppose. You were the one to see Barrow last, yes?”

Anna stopped putting away the night gown in her hands. She made eye contact with Mary’s reflection, trying to keep her expression neutral. She was being watched. And if she looked shaken, it would only invite a certain kind of attentive concern she was reluctant to accept. It felt too much like pity. And she had gathered enough of that to last two lifetimes.

“Yes, I was,” she smoothly resumed her task, “but I don’t think I’ll have much to tell them.”

“Who can know,” a dainty but expensive earring was fastened gently into place. Anna didn’t know why Lady Mary still bothered with earrings. Her dark bobbed hair was a veritable steel curtain when it was set - she’d decided on pearl-drops, and there would be no glimpse of them until she next changed. 

“But then,” Mary continued venomously, “who can know why butlers steal away in the night?”

So, that was her conclusion. But what _ had _ happened to Thomas? Some horrible accident? Had he truly quit without notice? And the police - what would they think? If they were investigating this as a missing persons case, surely they’d combed through local records of the staff at Downton (those that had records). And if they went through those records, they’d find the notes on hers from the London investigators, who found the notes from-

“Anna?”

“Yes, milady?”

“You seem distant.”

“My apologies.”

Lady Mary turned from the mirror and looked at her fully for what might have been the first time that morning.

“This whole ordeal has been an awful start to the day,” she said, genuinely trying for warmth, “and I want you to know that you don’t need to worry. Papa and I will sort everything out. You are an innocent woman in the eyes of the law, now. This is merely a formality.”

“I’m sure that’s the way of it, milady.”

**...**

Lady Mary’s words proved a weak shield against her nerves a few distracted hours later, when it was her turn to talk to the policeman who had finally arrived. He was a stern-looking man of what she guessed was close to her own age. He didn’t resemble anyone’s idea of a sleepy countryside constable. No, he was obviously a professional. He introduced himself as “Sergeant Allen.”

"Please, take a seat," Sergeant Allen motioned to the velvet settee. Mrs. Hughes stood watch nearby in the corner. Anna sent her an appealing look while the policeman casually took a sip of tea, and received a stoically sympathetic one in turn.

"I think I'll stand," Anna spoke carefully. "Once you get me down, I'll never get up again!" And she tried on a smile that felt more like a grimace. Standing felt more secure. She'd have a better hold on her words if she was standing, she was sure of it. They wouldn't be able to weave together a net to catch her, like last time. They didn't have anything other than stories and circumstance last time. She wondered what rocks they would turn over to try and make sense out of this oddity.

Sergeant Allen made no objection, "Let's get started then." He read off of a small, handheld notepad. "When and where did you last see Mr. Barrow?"

"Last night. In the butler's pantry."

"As far as you're aware, no one else talked to him after you saw him?"

Anna pressed her lips together. Anything and everything was a danger. His soft tone meant nothing.

"No. Not as far as I know." She couldn’t wait too long before answering. She admonished herself.

"Did you discuss anything?"

"Not really. We said goodnight. And then Ieft."

"Do you always wish Mr. Barrow a good night?"

"When I see him, yes." _ What are you implying? _

"Is the pantry on your way, then? If you stopped in to say good night."

"I was looking for my son. He fell asleep there."

Allen made some kind of scribble. Anna resisted the urge to rip the pad from his hands and scour its contents. She kept her hands folded, one on top of the other, in front of her. She blinked. It would be easier with John there, a reassuring presence at her side. Mrs. Hughes was an effective comfort, but Anna thought she would be hard-pressed to take her place in prison. If this whole thing was a worst-case scenario and Anna got caught up in the legal system. The ugly, soulless depths of it’s tangled branches that hung innocent people out to dry. Again. 

"Was Mr. Barrow unhappy with his job here?"

"I don't think so. He always seemed content enough."

More scribbling.

"And he made no indication of any personal quarrels, or discontent?"

"No."

"Are there any persons who would wish him ill-will that you are aware of?"

"No." _ Not at Downton. _

She would never say it - she highly doubted Sarah O'Brien had the motive or means to kill Thomas. That she knew of. But like many things with Thomas, Anna reflected, the truth would land him squarely in a jail cell. Regardless of whether he'd been done in by an angry lady's maid or not. And if she set the police on the trail of Miss O'Brien, Anna had no doubt the woman would slither her way back to Yorkshire and make Anna's life unfit for Satan himself to live. But Anna never would. Because Sarah O'Brien was certainly innocent...of this.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bates," Allen didn't bother to look up from his pad, where he once more scribbled some unknown observation. Perhaps he read her file. Perhaps he already had a hunch. Perhaps he was trying to force together pieces of a puzzle that didn't fit -

_ He's just writing down what you told him, is all. _

"Good day," she bid them farewell, and managed to hold together until she got outside of the library. Once the door clicked gently shut behind her, Anna all but fell against one of the pillars surrounding the outside of the foyer. She stayed there for a moment. Took a deep breath. The sound of her heart in her ears could not be swallowed by the cavernous stone ceiling.

"Pull yourself together, now," she whispered, and took one step after another on legs that felt like rubber. There were duties to be done.

**...**

There was some down time between lunch and dinner that Phyllis usually took advantage of to do mending, or other odds and ends. Some days she would treat herself to no work at all, and enjoy a cup of tea and pleasant conversation. Today, Phyllis found herself sneaking around the men’s side of the servant’s quarters.

She had a mission - it’d been weighing on her since Thomas had gone missing. She already knew the answer, but she had to see for herself. The lock had been replaced after Andy knocked it in, so the metalwork was different from the early Victorian-era installments the other doors sported. She placed her hand on the doorknob, squeezing it lightly with her fingers.

Phyllis held her breath. She knew he wasn't there. Albert had said so. He'd looked. But still, she had to check. 

She opened the bathroom on the men's side of the servant's corridor.

_ Empty. _

She let out a small breath. And cast a bashful glance to the left and the right.

There was hardly anyone to notice the scandal of her presence who lived there, anymore. Andy had moved out to the Mason farm when he and Daisy married. The hallboys spent most of their day scrubbing around the servant's hall. Sometimes she even came to talk to Thomas, before bed. Mrs. Hughes wasn't there to enforce the division between the sexes, and as butler Thomas didn't seem to mind one way or the other. The underservants were allowed to talk openly to each other at meals, and even did some chores side-by-side if they were out of sight.

Phyllis just had to make sure the maids stayed in line when Mrs. Hughes left for the night, and Thomas minded the hallboys. They were such young, silly things. But her general wariness in combination with Thomas's knowledge of all the possibilities for rule-bending and breaking made them an effective team.

Next, she went to his room. She jiggled the door knob - locked. Phyllis checked both ways again before turning and pulling at the doorknob as hard she could - !

Still locked. 

She resisted the urge to make some gesture of frustration. He wouldn’t be there, either - she knew because Mrs. Hughes had used the keys left in the butler's pantry to lock it in case the police wanted to look at it, undisturbed. Or so no one had that chance to change anything. But she didn’t want to change anything, she just wanted to look for clues! A missing suitcase, a scrap of paper with a telephone number on it, a book about international travel, a ransom note - her threshold was wide and her standards were low.

_ Pantry. _That was it.

Phyllis started determinedly on her way - the air of commitment and focus about herself was such that she doubted anyone would have stopped her had they actually seen her on the men's side. She passed a few under-staff on the stairs who gave her openly-wondering stares. The pantry was an obvious place - completely accessible for reasons pertaining to the Crawley family. It had not been locked, and she was starving for anything that resembled a clue.

She tried to be less noticeable once she got to the hall. She softened her footsteps - though it was the time of day for break, the hallboys had been recruited for the search efforts. Anna and Mrs. Hughes were preoccupied with the police. The only people she needed to avoid were Daisy and Polly. She opened the pantry and slipped inside, closing the door gently behind her. The room was usually tidy in appearance. Thomas didn't let things layabout - they all had their place. Which is what made the disassembled clock lying on the desk so strange. He wouldn’t leave a clock open.

“Dust gets inside and mucks up the mechanisms,” was Thomas’s explanation as to why.

The pieces were carefully arranged into a neat organization system - she remembered such fastidiousness as a girl, watching Thomas and Victoria’s father work. Lose one piece, and the whole task gets more complicated. The tools lay haphazard, a pair of tweezers and a minuscule screwdriver. Like he’d been in the middle of his work and been interrupted. Like he’d be right back, soon as she turned around.

She glanced at the triptych, caught one glimpse of the Virgin Mary's tortured expression, and quickly looked away again.

_ That actually _ is _ rather horrible. _

Phyllis kept her eyes averted - not out of unease, she told herself, but for the sake of focus - as she rummaged through the desk. She shuffled through old inventory lists, receipts, and catalogs. It appeared that under the pristine surface, Thomas had a different kind of organizational system. Rummaging through it was fruitless. Thomas's coattails were draped over the back of the chair - disorganized as his drawers might be, that was extremely unlike him. He’d been very careful with his clothes, even as a child. She carefully lifted it, and started feeling along seams when some soft crunch sounded from an interior pocket. It was a letter.

Phyllis hesitated a moment - the letter had obviously been opened already. The little cream envelope it had come in had been torn across the top, and the paper was rippled and waved with the impressions of fingers. But reading this letter (whether her suspicions were correct or not) would represent a deep breach of the trust between them. Thomas might not know, but Phyllis would. She pursed her lips in contemplation. And came to a decision.

_ I'm sorry, Thomas. But you'll have to forgive me. _

The mystery of what information the letter could contain was more valuable to her. She wanted an answer more than she feared Thomas's anger - if there was anything she had to do to help him, she would be blessed if invading his privacy was the simplest sin she had to commit. The letter read:

_ Dearest T - _

_ The memory of your parting words in York has kept a smile on my face this past month. Sir Backstairs has been priggish since I've come back, but that is to be expected. I consider myself lucky so much of my work involves being somewhere else, or I would never be clear of him. _

_ When we last met, we talked lightly of the future. I wasn't sure how to put it into words at the time, but there is something of great importance that I feel I am obligated to share with you. Don't worry - you know by now I'm not the sort to feed lines. _

_ You can be sure that my feelings towards you have not changed, T. What I have to say is something best discussed in person. I won't lie - it might not be easy to hear, so I want you to come prepared. I stress that this is not meant to scare you off, but to indicate towards our next steps. _

_ When is the soonest you can get away? Write me as soon as you know. I'll make sure some aunt or cousin comes down with something, and I'll be away. Thinking of you always. _

_ Love, _

_ R. Ellis _

Phyllis looked at the envelope. There was a return address, in London. But nowhere near the vicinity of Buckingham Palace. If this letter was from whom she imagined, the two of them were being very careful about where and when they received their mail. Thomas had dropped some hints she’d picked up on, but hadn’t said anything directly. He frequently underestimated her ability to piece together disparate clues.

Had he gone to meet him? _ Would _he meet him? Leave without any kind of good-bye? No. She knew he wouldn't - she remembered what he told her before he went to go work for Lord Stiles for that brief time. "You had faith in me when no one else did." And when she'd planted a gesture of familial affection on his cheek, he was the happiest she'd ever seen him. 

No. 

He would not leave her without saying so first. 

The sound of footsteps in the hallway didn’t startle her, but they did make her aware of the time. It was only a matter of days, hours perhaps, before the contents of the pantry were turned over to the police. The letter would be found and collected as evidence. And what then? There was only one thing to do. Phyllis copied the return address onto a piece of paper that she folded and slipped into her pocket. She’d find a safer place for it in her room. She folded the letter then, and stuck it under the heel of her foot, in her shoe. The damp was probably going to make the ink run a little, but the content was damning and the shoe was more secure than her pocket. A better place for secrets. She found Thomas’s lighter stowed in a drawer (more evidence for foul play - why leave a lighter if one smoked like a chimney?) and lit the edge of the envelope, holding it over the fireplace, watching the writing on its back disappear in a curl of smoke.

She would write a response as soon as she was able to. 

**...**

There hadn’t really been a servant’s supper to speak of. There’d been a few meager offerings of leftovers from the refrigerator and the larder, but nothing substantial. Everyone had been torn four alternating directions, juggling regular everyday chores with the added stress of a disappearance and all the procedural trimmings that accompanied one. It was just as well. Anna hadn’t been in the mood for anything, nibbled halfheartedly on some cold roast beef shavings. She could only think of collecting Johnny from upstairs, and heading home. It was so late, she knew it would be better to let him sleep. Perhaps it was selfish, but she wanted him home with her. And maybe secretly, she didn’t want to walk in the darkness alone. Not when Thomas was missing, and the...odd...occurrence with the rabbits that morning.

She collected Johnny from the nursery before leaving for the night - most all the others had gone home or gone to bed.

“Is Mr. Carson coming tomorrow?” she’d asked Mrs. Hughes before she left.

“We’ll see,” Mrs. Hughes rolled her eyes. “I know Lady Mary’s keen but I’m going to ask Mr. Carson to wait. Can you imagine, Thomas coming back from wherever he is, and finding himself replaced within a day? We’d never hear the end of it.”

_ If he’s coming back _. Anna didn’t know yet whether to be optimistic or realistic. What were the odds that Thomas had left without notice only to return? And if he hadn’t given left because he was quitting, was it really that likely he would have the ability to combat the real reason he was missing? But then, stranger things had happened. She made a promise to herself to mention him in her prayers before bed.

_ I just want John home _. Luckily she didn’t have long to wait. John would be back tomorrow, and she could share all the oddities of the past 24 hours with him then. Downstairs it was dark, but she found her coat and hat easily from practice. Johnny hovered by her legs, holding onto her skirt. He was full of an unusual amount of energy for so late at night.

“Fun today,” he said. Anna imagined his eyes were so bright with excitement, she could see them shine in the dark.

“Good,” she affixed her hat. “I’m glad you had a good day.”

She double-checked the bag she’d put together that morning - all in order. “Alright, let’s go ho-”

A faint but unmistakable chime sounded from deeper in the servant’s hall. 

_ Honestly? Now? _

There was a short beat of silence and then the bell continued it’s call. She debated pretending she didn’t hear it, and just leaving.

_ But what if it’s an emergency? _

It was unusual for the family to ring this late, especially now that their staff was so reduced. Anna couldn’t in good conscience leave without checking the board first. She stroked the top of Johnny’s head.

“Stay here, and don’t wander,” she instructed firmly. “I’ll be right back.”

“Alright, mummy.”

Anna took off her hat and coat and put them what she perceived to be the outline of the table. She squinted at the board. It wasn’t long before her hunch was proven correct - it was Lady Mary’s bell that was ringing.

“Stay put!” she reminded Johnny over her shoulder as she ascended the stairs. The quicker she got to the bedroom, the sooner she could resolve the problem, and the sooner she could go home. She would’ve taken the stairs two at a time, were they not so steep, and were she not wearing heels. It was times like these she begrudged the limited mobility of women’s fashion.

Anna arrived at Lady Mary’s bedroom in so short a time, she was dead sure it she’d set a personal record. She knocked lightly on the door for courtesy, but found the door locked when she tried to open it. So she waited. And waited. She knocked again, a little harder. She began debating whether or not knocking a third time would borderline on impertinence before it swung open, revealing a semi-disheveled Henry Talbot wrapped inelegantly in a dressing gown, and not much else.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Talbot,” Anna felt her cheeks grow hot, and she turned her head so she looked straight down the hallway. “I didn’t realize-”

“Is something the matter?” Mr. Talbot seemed more confused than angry, but that didn’t do anything to aleve her mortification. “An emergency...?”

“I’m terribly sorry, I thought I heard the bell - in the basement - before I left,” Anna had yet to shift her gaze. “So I thought -”

“Henry?” Lady Mary’s voice drifted from the bedroom. “Who is it?”

“It’s Anna.”

“Anna? Why is Anna outside my bedroom?”

“I thought I heard the bell, milady,” Anna spoke a little louder. She was not about to set foot in that bedroom for all the money she’d ever earned in her life. “I came to see if you needed anything.”

“I haven’t rung the bell.” Anna could envision the look of exasperated consternation on Mary’s face.

“I’m very sorry, milady. Mr. Talbot.”

“Go get some sleep, Anna,” Lady Mary’s disembodied voice dismissed her. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yes, milady,” Anna didn’t need to be told twice. _ I swear I heard the bell. _

She walked shamefully back down the stairs. It was one thing to be confronted with the proof of your employers’ intimate lives with the abstract proof of a child - Miss Caroline. It was another thing entirely to actually interrupt them mid-endeavor. And Lady Mary hadn’t even sounded embarrassed. Maybe that was just something that happened when you had a title; you became immune to the pitfalls of interaction that would decimate someone who lived a simpler life. 

She got to the bottom and made her way back to where she’d left her son. And promptly sighed. No sign of him.

"Johnny," she spoke into the darkness of the empty servant's hall. "Johnny, I don't want to have to look for you."

No response.

"Come out, now," she sounded more tired than angry. Anna's eyes adjusted to the dark. She found herself hoping, deeply, that he wasn't in the boot room. He wasn't in the kitchen. On a normal night, the copperware glinted ever so slightly in the faint moonlight. But there was no moon in the sky tonight. The great space hung empty, washing everything in a deeper black than usual.

She made the circuit through the hall, turning lights on and off as she went - he wasn't in the dining area (she looked under the table). He wasn't in the bathroom. He wasn't in the boot room. Mrs. Hughes’s sitting room and the silver room were locked.

"Johnny!" Anna injected her tone with a little anger as she walked back into the main space, feeling no closer to finding him than when she started. She had the urge to lightly scrub under her eyes in fatigue and exasperation.

As she turned to look down the hall that lead down the courtyard, she noticed that the door to the butler's pantry was ajar. But she never would have noticed it was ajar if light wasn't spilling from the tiny sliver of openness the door granted, sending a shaft of yellow slicing through the inky black air. It crawled from the floor to the wall - a pillar of shadow repellent.

She frowned. She could have sworn the door had been closed and the room had been dark last time she was down this way. _ I thought they would have locked this up for the night _.

"I've found you," Anna whispered to herself. She pushed into the pantry. Why hadn’t Mrs. Hughes locked the door? All the lights were blazing - the ceiling, the older gas lamps that were kept on the window sill. How had Johnny lit those? He couldn’t have.

"Come out," Anna commanded. No such ease. She scanned the room. The parts of the clock that Thomas had been working on were still laid neatly out on top of the desk. It was like a dissected specimen. Anna felt peculiarly bad about it - poor thing might never get put back together. That was assuming Thomas was truly in the wind. 

_ Wherever you are, I hope you’re someplace you want to be. _ She thought for another moment, then added, _ and safe. _

She stepped further in. The triptych loomed in the corner behind the desk, so she checked all the others first. He wasn't sprawled on the sitting chair, or under it, or behind it. He wasn't in any cupboards. As she grew closer to the grotesque painting, so did her anxiety. Places Johnny could be were quickly running out.

Anna reluctantly sidled up to the triptych. This was the last place. Her eyes raked over the canvas - it was the first good look she'd gotten since the thing arrived. She was both nervous and curious.

_ It lives up to its reputation. _

And here she thought the others were exaggerating - it was like an inverse Bible story. As far as she could tell, the content was not supposed to form one large narrative, but instead featured episodic representations of....something. They were all New Testament stories, but shared nothing else beside.There was a terrifying rendition of Jesus and Peter walking on water. There was Mary Magdalene, looking cowed, washing the feet of Peter the Disciple. 

Peter was on this painting twice - was there some regularity there? But in one panel he looked ready to die from fear, and in the other he stared at Mary Magdalene with a kind of fiery hunger that made the hair on Anna's neck prickle. She turned her attention to the one with the Mother Mary and two representations of Christ - her breath left her. That look on Mary's face. She'd seen it on her own. The anguish and pain - the pleading in her eyes as they stared up at what seemed to be a careless creator. Begging for grace.

There was a dull, golden halo painted behind her veiled head. It seemed like an afterthought, for it was poorly proportioned. It ballooned outward to the point it partially consumed the halo behind the crucified Christ who leaned on her shoulder for support.

She looked closer.

The crown of thorns was tangled in his hair, the marks of stigmata marred his hands and feet. A sword was buried in his side, hanging somewhat loosely from the flesh. But despite all this injury, no blood flowed. The precious blood of Christ had run out it seemed.

She looked closer.

His eyes were brown, unfocused, flatly empty, and barely open. They reminded Anna of a funeral she'd gone to as a girl. The family, extended relatives of her mother, didn't have the money to get their only son's face set before burying him. Nothing was tied in place or sewn shut - he was going in the ground exactly how he arrived on it, but for the six years he'd lived. He'd died of a childhood illness. The coffin had been left open for the wake, and large but low-value coins were laid on his eyelids.

"Let me see him," his mother had cried, collapsing into her husband who stood in the way. "Let me see my boy!"

"Beatrice," her husband had whispered, fierce and embarrassed. "You're making a spectacle of yourself."

"I want to look into his eyes," she sobbed, "to see them one last time..."

Little Anna had clutched her mother's skirt, terrified and enraptured, as the coins were lifted. And maybe because he'd already been gone a few days, the lids slowly, slowly rolled partway up. As if he'd only been asleep, and now the screams of his mother had broken him from a dream.

And that's when Anna realized that Christ wasn't leaning on his mother for support. He was leaning on her because he was dead.

She looked closer.

The infant Christ was certainly alive. He was animate with fear - his tiny limbs were thrown upwards and to all sides, trying to find purchase in Mary's arms. Trying to keep from falling. His toothless mouth was open in silent cry, his face frozen in the unhappiest-looking wail. But where a live infant would screw their eyes closed, this baby's eyes were trapped wide open. The whites of his eyes jumped off the canvas, and the focus of his stare fell not to God. Not to his mother. 

But to Anna.

She took a step back.

"My God," she shook her head. Who would make such a thing? And she had almost turned away, almost left the room, when she noticed them.

Behind Mother Mary and her sons was a crowd of people. They held gifts in their arms - jewels, spices, food, cloth, silver and gold. 

Animals.

Horse. Donkeys. Cattle. A whole cabaret of wild and exotic creatures Anna had never heard of; animals that were impossible to identify. And rabbits. They weren't easy to spot at first, but now they were all she could see. Rabbits lurked at the edge of the crowd amongst a forest of ankles, they nestled in the crowded corners of foreground, they perched in the arms and on the shoulders of the spectators. 

All looking the same. 

All still, and all staring. 

Staring at her.

_ No... _

Everything and everyone on this painting had eyes.

"Johnny?" She called. She waited to see if he would come trotting out from behind the painting. "...Johnny?"

She took a step towards the edge. She noticed the gap provided by the feet between the bottom of the painting and the ground was not big enough to tell her if he was on the other side. And that the feet supporting the triptych were in the shape of of a rabbit's. Three rabbits chased each other, tied together by the ears it seemed, atop the middle panel.

She took another step towards the edge. One more and she'd be around.

"Johnny?" She called one last time, and she couldn't iron out the quaver in her voice. Nothing in her wanted to look around the corner. She didn't want to know what was there. But she had to.

"Come out, I can't find you."

_ It's only a painting. _

And after steeling her courage Anna took the last step, rounding the corner to duck completely out of sight behind the triptych.

But if anyone had been in the room to wait for Anna’s reappearance, they would have found themselves sorely disappointed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, thank you so much for all your lovely comments so far! I treasure each one. And I'm sorry the update took a while; I've had a few busy weekends in a row.


	5. 1914

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna and Thomas both experience a sudden change in setting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Revisiting that same instance of talk-based conversion therapy, but it's a little different. References to miscarriage.

_ Late July, 1914 _

The light spilled in through the windows, washing the hall of the upper gallery in the happy glow of a midsummer morning. It had the effect of bringing ethereal luster to the ordinary.

"Are you coming, Anna?" Gwen held a feather duster in one hand and a well-worn polishing rag in the other. She was dressed in the old housemaid’s uniform Anna remembered from years ago - green print dress, lacy apron, inoffensive mobcap. And was it her imagination, or did Gwen look  _ younger _ than she should?

"I...yes...?" She realized belatedly that a duster and rag were in her own hands. Instead of her black dress, she too was wearing her old housemaid’s uniform. Her apron denoting her status was once again tied about her waist. Her hand traveled to the top of her head, and met the stiff fabric of what was unmistakably her own mob cap. 

"We'll want to hurry, I think," Gwen started on her way down the hall again, her tone jovial. "In your opinion as head housemaid, why are they having us dust and polish the bedrooms if the garden party is outside?"

"I...couldn't say," her speech was stilted as she struggled to grasp what exactly happened. She turned around. There was no one in the corridor but them.  _ I was looking for Johnny. Where is he? _

“Gwen, can you help me?” she asked, blindly attempting to find some sort of rally point. Someone would tell her something that would make sense, wouldn’t they? Someone had the answers. “I have some questions.”

“Certainly,” Gwen nodded and smiled, absently twirling the duster as she walked. 

"What happened?" She asked. "Why are you back here? What happened to...being a secretary? And your husband?"  _ Why can't I remember how I got here?  _

But Gwen’s response only deepened Anna’s confusion when she gave her a hurt look. Like a cat that had gotten underfoot. "Oh, so now you're joining in with the others, then?” she accused. “Making fun? You don’t know anything about it. Why would you, of all people, say something so horrible? Leave me alone."

“Wait -”

But Gwen was already stalking away, steps as angry as they could be while keeping her presence “invisible” to Downton’s chief residents. Anna watched, stunned, as her fiery-red bun bobbed up and down the corridor. Anna thought she heard a frustrated sniff or two before Gwen disappeared from sight into a bedroom. 

_ Making fun? Making fun of what? _

“What on Earth is going on?” she muttered to herself. Thomas gone missing, Gwen back at the abbey, and a garden party she was only just hearing about? She was just about to start looking for John or Mrs. Hughes when -

“Watch it-!”  _ THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD- _ ** _CRACK_ ** _ ! _

Anna, already on edge, jumped clear out of her skin as the sound rang through the foyer, echoing off the ceiling in what she was sure was the direction of the main staircase. She hurried towards the noise; it sounded dreadfully like something heavy and expensive being dropped. 

"My god!" someone moaned, a young man who sounded almost like... _ But that's impossible _ . Anna shook her head to clear her thoughts, drawing nearer.  _ William Mason is dead _ . 

"What are we going to do? You’re the one who wanted to walk behind! We shouldn’t have taken the main staircase," the voice-that-could've-belonged-William-Mason continued, a note of hysteria creeping into its undertones. Anna slowed her approach with caution, deciding to peer over the railing to get a read of the situation before fully involving herself. 

"It's different," she heard the unmistakable, slightly-fried quality of Thomas's voice echo after. "It's not the same."

"What? The  _ staircase _ ?"

She sidled up to the railing, leaning over just enough so she could get a full view. And sure enough there, on the first landing, stood William Mason. Not quite as tall as she remembered, but a towering figure all the same. His face was tight with worry. And standing a few steps below him, pressed to the side of the stairs, was Thomas. The large (now broken) mahogany writing desk they’d been moving lay at the bottom, spindly legs on one side splintered under the uneven weight and force of it’s fall.

“Oh,” she breathed quietly. The whole world felt very thin all of a sudden, like she was standing at the end of a long tunnel. Everything was happening and she was watching it all through a thick pane of glass.

_ This isn’t right at all. _

...

“It’s not the same,” Thomas heard himself repeat the words again. He leaned against the banister behind him, safe from the path of falling furniture. How could he make them understand? “It’s not the  _ same _ !”

“What isn’t!?” The normally placid William was approaching something like true fury. At another time, Thomas might have found that mildly thrilling. But now it was all he could do to keep from running madly out the door, like he was still in that doctor’s office in London.

_ That  _ is  _ where I was. I had made a scene and accepted the tea that time around, but then  _ \- 

Then he was here. Underneath the backend of a monstrous writing desk.

“Everything isn’t,” he answered. “You. You’re not alive. You’re dead. This isn’t the right time.” The recitation was more for himself - to affirm what he knew to be true, despite everything his senses screamed at him. Every time he told someone about the wrongness provided a feeling of release, even if the reaction was the same; disbelief, shock, anger. And it never once stopped the shifting.

_ But this? _

This was new.

“What in the  _ hell _ are you talking about?” William whispered the curse, eyes peeled for Carson who was almost surely on his way after such a loud disaster. Typical - he never took the revelation of his impending death well. Thomas noticed the black band William had fastened around his arm; a token of mourning for his dead mother.

_ So it’s after the London season, then. _

“All I’m saying is -” he was interrupted.

“Thomas? William?” Anna stood at the top of the stairs. Her face looked drawn and pale. This was exactly what this absurd situation did not need - more witnesses. She started trotting down towards them, ignoring all sense of propriety about who was on what staircase.

“Anna,” William cheered at the sight of his ally, “the desk-! I knew we shouldn’t have been taking it up this way, I just knew it.” He waited eagerly for backup. His plan seemed to be hinging on forming a unified front that pinned the whole ordeal on Thomas. 

Thomas was still recovering from this new shift, and was operating on a thin margin of emotional control. “Oh, you did, did you?” he muttered, still holding fast to the banister.  _ And yet, you still agreed to carry it. _

Anna seemed to take stock of the wreckage longer than necessary.

"I'll help clean up," she finally said. "You go on, William. Find Mr. Carson or Mrs. Hughes and tell them about the accident."

“But-” William questioned.

“Don’t fret. It’ll be alright.”

Thomas was sure that wasn’t an accurate prediction of the future. Alright for William, maybe. But he’d masterminded this ill-fated plan that had gone off without a hitch, the first time. Carson would want a guilty party.

“Fine,” William still looked unsure, but drifted away while throwing some looks behind him.

“I-” Thomas started to try explaining himself, but stopped when Anna held up a hand. She was still watching William walk away, and held that position until he was surely out of earshot.

“Thomas,” she finally whispered, sounding just as odd as Thomas knew he felt. “Is this where you disappeared to?”

“...What?”

“I said-”

“I know what you said,” he spoke quickly, and was surprised when Anna grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him towards the shelter of the corridor upstairs - it was very forward, but he let himself be guided along like a stray from the flock.

“Are you truly here?” he asked, dazed, as Anna stashed the both of them in a partially shielded alcove that led to a hidden servant’s door. “Is it you?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Anna said, making sure they were alone. “How did you get here? Where  _ are  _ we?”

“1914, I think. Buggered if I know why” he swore, past the point of care. He felt something starting to overcome the sense of dread and defeat he’d been experiencing with every shift - something that felt like ecstasy. Ecstasy because he might not be alone in his awareness of how wrong it all was. Ecstasy because something was finally feeling familiar. 

“The last thing I remember is looking for Johnny, and then...I walked behind the painting.”

“The triptych?” Thomas echoed, an instinctual jolt of apprehension lighting up in his chest.

“Just please tell me you know why Gwen is here, and why William’s alive again,” Anna’s gaze was focused somewhere in the middle distance, “because I don’t understand any of this.” Her voice broke on the last word, but her expression remained impassive.

“I’m just as turned around as you are,” he whispered back, the brief ecstatic feeling beginning to fade. He had just as many questions as Anna. He was in no position to start giving answers.

“What on Earth?” the dismayed exclamation floated up from the foyer. Lady Cora had discovered the wreckage they’d abandoned.

Thomas did some quick figuring. “We need to go down,” he said. “Meet me in the courtyard first chance. Maybe we can talk before the shift happens.”

“The shift?”

“I can’t explain it now, just follow me.”

Even in the middle of the absurdity of it all, they each took a moment to make sure they were presentable for the lady of the abbey. Thomas tugged at his livery, Anna adjusted her apron, and then they took the servant’s stairs down to make amends. Or at least an explanation.

“Thomas. Anna,” Lady Cora motioned to the writing desk when she saw them. “What happened here?”

“Apologies, milady,” Thomas started in, trying for obsequious regret. “William and I were trying to take it upstairs and it got away from us.” Better to lead with the truth.

“Up the main stairs?” she sounded as cross as good taste would allow, a line furrowed between her eyebrows. “I must confess I’m disappointed. Anna, did you see what happened?”

So, she was fact-checking with Anna. He’d almost forgotten the boldness of the doubt other’s used to wield when talking to him.

“Yes, milady,” Anna piped in, playing her part as expertly as Thomas did his own. He suppressed the urge to be impressed. Anna continued, “I was up in the corridor when it fell. I came down to help clean up. William left to find Mr. Carson, and Thomas and I were just looking for Mrs. Hughes.”

Lady Cora craned her neck slightly, inspecting the splintered legs without touching them. “It must have fallen terribly far - mahogany isn’t easy to break,” she glanced searchingly at Thomas. “Were you injured?”

“No, milady.”

“Good,” Lady Cora sighed. “Carson has enough on his plate with the garden party, never mind a garden party with one footman.”

Anna and Thomas waited expectantly as Lady Cora internally came to a verdict; it was a silent trial, one where Thomas and William’s careers hung in balance with Anna as the sole witness. Lady Cora played the role of judge as if she’d been born to it - which in a very true way, she had.

“I  _ am _ unhappy, Thomas,” she finally spoke, settling on a sentence of benign disappointment. “This was poor work on your part. William’s, too.”

“Yes, milady.”  
“But I suppose it’s manageable,” she sighed again. “There must be a man in London or York who sorts this kind of problem. I was having it moved to storage so we could put out the new one, anyway. I’ll think on it more and inform you if there will be additional consequences. Clear it away to the attic, but keep all the pieces together.”

“Yes, milady,” he bowed his head. 

Lady Cora turned her attention to Anna. “If you see O’Brien before I ring the bell,” she said, “tell her I’d like to draw a bath. And Anna - it is good having you back from London. The girls miss you when you’re gone.”

“Thank you, milady.”

The lady of the house just smiled in response and stepped lightly around the ruined desk before ascending to the upper floors.

Thomas heard Anna whisper to herself, “I was in London?”

“With Mrs. Patmore, was it?” he supplied quietly, pulling a memory from the back of his mind like a gossamer thread in an imaginary loom. “For her eyes?”

“Yes,” Anna paused. “I remember.”

“Meet me in the courtyard,” Thomas reminded her before turning to start collecting the pieces, “soon as you can.”

...

The parts were easy enough to clean up, but finding William to help carry the whole mess to the attic was another story.

“I haven’t found Mr. Carson yet,” he protested as Thomas finally retrieved him from the ante-library. “I thought he might be getting afternoon tea ready.” William kept giving Thomas funny looks when he thought he couldn’t see - obviously he hadn’t shaken the disturbance of Thomas decrying his continued existence. Thomas had no time for it; he was already mentally berating himself for letting Anna go so easily. For  _ telling  _ her to go. 

_ If another shift happens, what then? Will we still end up in the same place? _ He damned himself.  _ This....place...is messing with me.  _ He knew - sort of - that changing the course of memory as it was intended to happen could alter what had been into a new branch of possible events. The time he’d spent shifting had already taught him that. He could only hope that this counted as one of those branches, and that it was a long one. So he played along. Quickly. 

“Her ladyship knows already,” Thomas informed him, impatiently. “If she wants Mr. Carson to know, she’ll tell him.” 

“What did she say?” William grabbed the back of the desk this time.

“Nothing yet,” Thomas was tucking the splintered bits into a drawer. In his haste to finish the task and get to the courtyard, he caught the tip of this finger as the drawer closed. “Damn!”

They settled into a tense and angry silence as they made their way up the (proper) staircase to the second floor corridor. The anger came from William, stewing over his unwilling involvement in the incident. Thomas was the source of all things tense, physical and otherwise. Every muscle in his body was taught, his mind was racing - everything in him was ready to fight shifting. He had to stay, now that it seemed he wasn’t alone. He spent all his energy on this thought (and not tripping as he went up the stairs backwards). They continued in this way until they made it to the attics. By the time it was all said and done, Thomas estimated a decent amount of time had passed. Wasted.

“Right here,” Thomas motioned to deposit the desk by the doorway, for ease of retrieval. If he stayed in this time long enough to need to move the thing again it would be useful, but he doubted that. And then he left William there, a bitter “You’re welcome,” following sarcastically at his heels. Thomas didn’t like to think ill of the dead (even if they were technically living), but he was reminded once more why he’d never liked William Mason, despite his benign demeanor. 

_ He expected too much. Took too many things for granted. _

But instead of lobbing a sharp remark over his shoulder, Thomas just kept walking.

...

Anna needed to change into her black dress for dinner. She was running late. The afternoon was wearing on and she found herself falling into familiar patterns like a new wagon wheel in an old track. Ironically, they were the only thing that felt familiar in a never ending parade of events she’d apparently already lived. Retread memories were queer; routine was sacrosanct. She made her way up to the servant’s quarters slowly, trailing her fingers along the worn wooden railing.

_ It feels exactly the same _ .

“I suppose it’s the only thing to do,” Mrs. Hughes’s words floated down from further up, from a landing out of sight.

“There’s no ‘supposing’ about it,” Mr. Carson answered. “His lordship has already decided. He’s a thief, and thieves have no place at Downton.”

Anna languidly came to a stop.  _ Are they talking about John? _ Thomas’s reminder of her time in London with Mrs. Patmore had refreshed the revelation of John, Vera, and the regimental silver. And her heart sank when she realized she had yet to go to Lord Grantham to tell him what she’d uncovered. 

“Will you give him a reference?” Mrs. Hughes asked, the way her voice echoed off the walls telling Anna they were drawing closer.

“Certainly not,” Mr. Carson scoffed. “I wouldn’t suggest the village inn take him on as a shoe shiner.”

“He’ll have a hard time without one...and you only have the proof of another man’s word.”

“It’s proof enough, Mrs. Hughes. After the garden party, Thomas will leave this house without a reference, and that’s flat.”

They were almost on top of her now, and Anna threw herself back into action so her eavesdropping was not obvious. She kept her eyes on the floor in front of her, like she was doggedly running through a mental list of everything she needed to accomplish before dinner. It was an easy effect to accomplish, because she actually was conducting mental exercises. But they all revolved around the knowledge that she was in 1914 when she was supposed to be in 1928, and Thomas was slated to be sacked.

She soon brushed past the butler and housekeeper with a cheerful, “Afternoon!” and kept on her way. She caught them exchange a wary glance with one another when they passed; like two parents caught discussing something they didn’t want their children to hear. But no matter what they said, Thomas hadn’t lost his job in 1914. He wouldn’t lose it this time.

_ Will he? _ She would strangle her fear in the cradle of her heart if she could. 

But first, she had to change.

...

Thomas was alone in the courtyard, and had been for some time. It was unlikely anyone was looking for him - William always kept glumly mum whenever Thomas scarpered off after doing what he considered his fair share. There wasn’t much to be done until it was time to set the table. He paced back and forth, worried the cobbletones with the bottoms of his shoes. And then stopped when he thought what harm that would be doing to the soles. But then he remembered none of that mattered and worried his way around the courtyard a few times more. It was a vacuous and undignified gesture, but there was no one around to see it.

“Where are you?” he spoke out loud to himself. He would wait for twenty more minutes, and then head inside for reconnaissance. They simply didn’t have the time - Anna, though, didn’t know that. Maybe she was wandering aimlessly around the abbey, caught in a daze of confusion. It would be perfectly understandable if she was.

He leaned back against the wall, the brick warm from the light of the afternoon sun. It was cooling now that the shadows of later day were starting to move in, but there was still enough heat left in the walls to make things uncomfortable. The effect was similar to a mild oven baking him into all the layers of his livery. The smells - he restrained himself from lighting a cigarette, however much he wanted one. He smelled the dirt and the trees, and the faintest whiff of woodsmoke from the kitchen. Being here, in one moment, was a slight balm. 

_ There is no war. There are no doctors. It’s not a jail cell. _

But there was also no Richard, no Phyllis, and everyone hated him again. Or were at least mildly distrustful of his motivations at every turn. He sighed and closed his eyes. 

_ Hurry up, Anna _ .

The door creaked open, and Thomas turned - only to find O’Brien floating wearily to her usual haunt at his side. Even that, in a way, was a minor species of reassuring (except for the simple fact that she was not the person he needed to talk to). He would’ve laughed at the irony of once again finding comfort in the woman’s presence if he could. But as far as this Sarah O’Brien was concerned, she was before everything - before Alfred, before Jimmy. So instead he took out his cigarettes and offered her one.

“No,” she shook her head, and he finally registered her hollow tone. Her gaunt look, a stare eerily like the ones he’d seen on the battlefield.

_ Wait... _

“Something terrible has happened,” O’Brien continued. “I’d just...like some air.”

_ That was today? _

“What is it?” he froze his voice, banishing all hints of horror or suspicion. Trying to sound light, disinterested. If he wasn’t successful, he’d just have to hope she wouldn’t notice.

“Lady Cora,” she sounded like she was about to crumple under the weight of her words, “has lost the baby.” The true weight on her now was that of her actions - how heavily one errant bar of soap and weak moment sat on the conscience. But Thomas wasn’t supposed to know that for five more years.

...

Anna hurried through the servant’s hall - keeping one eye out for Thomas, and the other out for John. Both of them could bring a different kind of sense to all of this. Thomas in a practical way, John in a way she couldn’t verbalize. She just knew she needed to do all she could to find a sense of equilibrium, and soon.

Carson and Mrs. Hughes were huddled by the doorway to the pantry, talking in hushed tones. She rushed past them for the second time that afternoon, catching the word “miscarriage” on the way. Something inside her curdled. She hadn’t realized - but there was no time for realizations about things that had already happened. She needed to focus her energy on the why of the when.

She got through to the courtyard without anyone stopping her to divert her to some other task, and she was not surprised to see Thomas waiting for her. O’Brien’s unexpected presence, however, sent her mind churning for a quick way to amend their privacy. The solution that came to her was not one she was proud of. 

Anna made instant eye contact with the other woman - crumpled against the wall - and injected as much urgency she could into the act she was about to deploy.

“Her ladyship is asking for you,” she lied. “I don’t know what for.”

O’Brien didn’t need to be told twice. She flew back into the abbey like a bat back to a belfry, door slamming shut behind her. Anna looked at Thomas, who was caught in the middle of a cigarette.

“That should keep her away for a while,” Anna confided, slowly settling next to where Thomas was leaning under the arch of two stone columns. “Lady Cora...”

“I gathered,” he grimly tapped some ash onto the ground. 

“It’s still terrible.”

“It is.”

“What are we going to do?”

“About Lady Cora or about this?,” Thomas made a small motion to their surroundings. “It might be disappointing to hear, but as cracked-up as this for you, this is the first moment I’ve had to actually think in...I’m not sure how long.”

He was younger, yes, but he also looked tired. She was sure she did too. But there was no avoiding it. She was being forced to add to their troubles.

“I heard them say they’re going to dismiss you,” Anna pressed her hands together, “after the garden party.” 

“Who did?” he looked mildly surprised but unconcerned.

“Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes.”

“Ah,” he took another drag.

_ Are those rotten things really that effective, or has he just gone completely mental? For that matter - have I? _

“What are we going to do about it?” Anna repeated, just managing to keep her irritation at bay.

“Nothing,” he said. “We’ll probably be shifting soon anyway, so there’s no reason to come up with a plan. It’ll just get mucked up.”

“What do you _ mean _ ?” her exasperation was betraying her now. “You can’t keep talking about things I don’t understand as if I should already know what they are.”

He was silent for a while, looking at something she could not see.

“Shifting. It was like a reel at the cinema, reliving bad memories. Again and again, always the same ones,” Thomas looked at her. “Then you came and it changed. So now I don’t know what to think.”

“Wait,” it was occurring to her slowly. “Thomas, how long have you been here?”

“I’m not sure - lost track. Impossible to tell. Why?”

“You were only gone one day,” Anna’s mind was reeling with the implications.  _ How does time work here? _

“One day?” he blinked. “That’s impossible.”

_ What about any of this is possible?! _

“It’s true!” she turned fully towards him. “You were gone, the police came, and I looked for my son in your pantry. Then I was here.”

“I was also in the pantry,” he mulled wonderingly. “I was looking at the painting. I touched it.”

“I walked behind it.”

They stared at one another, coming to the same strange and inexplicable realization - this had something to do with the triptych.

“Was it...,” Thomas trailed off, gesturing emptily, at a loss for words to describe it. But Anna caught his meaning. The horror on the canvas before she disappeared.

“Yes.”

They stood in silence for a second, soaking in the awkward malaise of uncertainty and answered questions. They thought they’d uncovered one mystery, but each question they resolved sprouted new ones to take its place. Anna watched a curl of smoke lift of the end of Thomas’s mostly-spent cigarette.

"Can I have one of those?" she broke the quiet.

Thomas's eyebrows about shot up into his hairline.

"What?" She was slightly defensive.

"You just...don't seem like the type." Nevertheless, he took out a cigarette from the half-spent package and warily extended to her.

"And what type is that?" She took it between her fingers. And looked at it. Her inexperience was betraying her attempt at matching his devil-may-care approach to this whole unreal situation. She was stranded inside a painting, or perhaps time and memory. And she was sharing a smoke with Thomas Barrow.

"You need to light it..."

"I know. Can I borrow that as well?"

"Here," he motioned her closer and lit hers with the end of his own. "Saves a match."

She brought it to her lips, inhaled - and wheezed. Hot pins prickled from her throat to the bottom of her lungs. Anna tried to stifle a cough. Tried.

"Don't go too fast if it's your first," he almost looked amused. "You'll make yourself sick faster than Mr. Branson can ruin polite dinner conversation."

Before Anna could retort, the door to the courtyard swung open and O'Brien walked back out, intending to return to her perch of sorrow. She stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Anna and Thomas huddled together, cigarettes in hand. They all froze as if she'd stumbled onto something taboo and obscene. It was almost comical.

Anna dropped her cigarette to the ground and squashed it uncertainly with her heel. Thomas looked more than a little mournful at the waste. She looked over her shoulder, noting O’Brien’s expression held a definite air of vengeance.

“I better go,” she said.

“Let’s meet again, after dinner,” Thomas whispered, moving his mouth hardly at all. “Once the rest of them are in bed.”

She nodded, saying, “Servant’s hall.” And she turned to start her retreat.

“What was the meaning of that?” O’Brien’s earlier sorrow had melted into the bones of rage. Her voice was cold, and she confronted Anna with it as she passed her. “You lied to me.”

“I must have misunderstood,” Anna couldn’t look her in the eye - not for this. “Very sorry.”

She felt O’Brien’s stare fixed on the back of her neck as she walked inside.

_ At least there’s no rabbits. _

...

“How is she?” Thomas asked O’Brien, trying to draw her attention and discontent away from Anna. “Her ladyship.”

“What were you talking about,” it was a demand for information, not a request.

“She was telling me what happened. In case I didn’t know.”

“And how did  _ she  _ know? That girl is up to something,” O’Brien analyzed sharply. “Lurking about and telling tales.”

“Anna doesn’t get up to much,” Thomas was still trying to casually deflect. “She wouldn’t start now.”

O’Brien looked at him thinly. Her exhaustion and grief were still apparent under her veil of anger. “Have you forgotten about the snuffbox, already? It was Anna and that old fustilugs who did that. And then you’re out here sharing a fag with her like a gossiping hen.”

_ Yes, but we came up with that idea first, didn’t we. _

“Pardon me for living,” he muttered. He had not missed this aspect of O’Brien; the paranoia. He currently had enough of his own to deal with without having to worry about attending hers, too.

“It’ll do you good to remember who your friends are,” she continued to chide him, picking up furious steam to hide her own dark emotions, “and who’ll have you done in as soon as they’re able.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he flicked the fag end away, unimpressed.

...

“How was London, Anna?” Lady Mary was keeping a stiff upper lip to hide the fact she was crestfallen in every sense of the word. Dressing for dinner was a complete farce. Anna could tell she wanted to be with her mother, still recovering in the master bedroom, but Lady Cora had bid her daughters an evening of respite. It had been hard not to spend the whole time tending to Sybil gaping like a paralyzed fish. Lady Sybil was the second person Anna had encountered that day who was supposed to be dead and gone. Anna had tended to Sybil like a farmer to a sick horse - with reverent caution. Lady Sybil and Edith had already been attended to - it was just Anna and Mary, now.

“It was fine, milady,” Anna ministered to the other woman’s hair in a way of subtle comfort; she did not use as many pins, and kept the style a little more lax than usual. It would be easier to take out, and easier to wear without the physical pain of over-wrought fashion. “Mrs. Patmore’s procedure went well. She’ll be fighting fit again soon.”

“That’s good to hear. And what did you do when you weren’t playing nursemaid?”

“Oh, this and that. I made some social calls, is all. Nothing exciting, I’m afraid.”

She had gone to see John’s mother - her future late mother-in-law. It was odd to think of it like that. She hadn’t even caught a glimpse of John himself. Anna had spent so much time running about the abbey from top to bottom and back to front, there was no spare moment to find him. 

“Next time you go, you must make some time for excitement,” Lady Mary dispensed her advice morosely. “You only get so many chances at it.”

“I’ll be sure to,” Anna responded, knowing that Matthew Crawely was weighing on Mary’s mind almost as heavily as Lady Cora and the heir-that-wasn’t. Love always brought heartache in hand with joy.

“Thank you, Anna. That’ll be all until after dinner,” Mary dismissed her. Anna nodded and left the room - next on the list of evening tasks was aiding dinner service off-stage. And then supper in the servant’s hall. Where John would certainly be, keeping a chair open at his side. Waiting for her.

She was almost afraid of their inevitable meeting, thought she’d been eager for it before. Once she saw him, talked to him, Anna was sure she would know the truth of her situation - whether it was a product of her own mind or their new reality. And she worried the outcome would not be the one she wanted. Ideally, she would wake up soon, and then she’d turn and regale John with the bizarre dream she’d had. He’d shake his head and laugh at the comical spin she’d give the whole thing. Then she would go and wake up Johnny, and they would sit down to breakfast. 

_ Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. _ She didn’t.

...

William was even sadder than he had before. It seemed he’d had a chance to settle into a real melancholy after the incident with the writing desk had briefly jolted him into a being of pure anxiety. The anxiety had faded, and now all that was left was mopiness. He trailed Thomas around the dinner table with barely enough energy to fuel a votive candle. Thomas felt he was surrounded by nothing but heavy emotion. Between the angst being generated by William (on account of his mother) and everyone else (on account of the baby), it was a wonder there was still any air left to breathe. Carson seamlessly ducked in and out between the two footmen as he refilled wine glasses, because that was apparently the only part of the meal the family was actually eating. They accepted the lamb and the mint sauce from Thomas’s platter, but let it sit on their plates. Picking at it would be unseemly.

The silence in the servery went unruffled. He fancied Carson would’ve thrown a bottle of port at anyone who tried to disturb it. Thomas and Anna handed off different dishes for various courses in a dance of domesticity they’d never forgotten. Thomas tried to make eye contact with her at every opportunity, but she kept her gaze only as level as it needed to be to ensure the safety of whatever she was dispatching him with. And every time he went back into the dining room without a response he grew a little more frustrated. He needed  _ some  _ form of additional confirmation for their later plans, after all. He was too used to things changing quickly, plans being averted or canceled.

He was going to have to educate Anna in the language of surreptitious glances.

Dinner eventually concluded without fanfare, solemn or otherwise. And instead of going through to the parlor or library, everyone retired to bed. Which honestly made things easier. He didn’t have to worry about valeting for his lordship (how ironic), so Thomas hurried the process of cleaning up the silverware and putting away the tablecloth to laundry. 

“Who lit the fire under you?” William observed glumly.

“Efficiency is a valuable skill, William,” Thomas muttered back, using the firm and authoritative tone he’d perfected one his way up the ladder. It was pleasant enough not to invite argument, but at the same time let the addressee know that there would be no exceptions to whatever they had just been denied. The denied party in this circumstance was William’s aimless curiosity.

...

It was easy to get Lady Mary into bed. It was not easy to trek down to the servant’s hall, knowing who and what she would find. Anna remembered what had happened before. There had been a terrible fight between Thomas and William after the former had needled the latter for the last time. She doubted it would happen that way again, but that almost made it worse. What catastrophic event would break the tension of supper spent thinking about dead babies and grieving mothers? There wouldn’t be one. They’d just have to stew in it. And John was there.

He turned expectantly to her and smiled, having saved her a seat next to his near the head of the table. It was an unusual place for an under servant such as herself to sit, but she was so well-liked by the upper members of staff they were willing to look the other way. And it didn’t hurt that she had John to advocate for her; he had built up two years of good reputation by this time in spite of attempts to sabotage him. Her attention slid then to the once-sabotagers - O’Brien, caught in a grim personal milieu, and Thomas. But this Thomas’s haughty air was tempered, and he seemed to be sitting next to O’Brien out of obligation than any desire to actually be there. Because this was not the Thomas she knew as a young woman, but the one she’d worked alongside in 1928.

_ Supposedly. _

She sat next to John.

Supposing that what Thomas had told her was true and they were all caught in their own cycle of bad memories, she perished to think too hard about what hers would be. Like the idea of seeing John, she’d been dodging the thought all day.

_ It can’t be true. I won’t go through all of that again. I refuse. _

“Are you managing, Anna?” 

She blinked.

“You seem shaken,” John continued, concerned. It was something he would say, if he were really there.

“I’m alright,” she said, “just tired.” And it hit her then the scope of everything she would be losing if it turned out whatever this was - in the painting, in memory, in time - was true and permanent. She was not yet married to John. Their son wasn’t born -  _ would _ he be born? If any of this emotion spilled over into her response, John had the social grace not to comment on it. And he let her be for a while, content to idle by her side as a reassuring presence.

“Mrs. Hughes said you spent some time in the courtyard with Thomas and Mrs. O’Brien today,” he lowered his voice. “Are they giving you trouble?”

At the sound of his name, Thomas turned away from the quiet conversation he was having with O’Brien and looked at them.

“No,” she shook her head and had to resist every impulse to take John’s hand in her own. “No, they’ve been no trouble at all.”

And she began to see another potential problem lift its head from the sand, should this be their reality. Which was beginning to feel more and more true. 

_ How do we combat all the moments before this one? And how do we prepare for the future to come? _

...

It was easier for Thomas to sneak down than it was for Anna - he slept in a room by himself, but Anna was sharing with Gwen. He found himself waiting for her again at the table in the servant’s hall. And as he waited, thinking about places he’d rather be, he again found himself wondering if Anna had forgotten about their agreement to meet.

He lit a candle while he waited, and it cast a dim light just wide enough to observe the closer parts of the room. It made him think of nights with Richard, secret meetings and underground dances - something trapped but beautiful, something trying to flutter its way free that wasn’t allowed to be seen. 

Light steps on the stone floor alerted him to Anna’s presence. She was wrapped in her robe, arms crossed protectively in front of her body. Like she was trying to hold herself. He was still in his livery. It felt stiffer than usual after all the events of the day. 

“Gwen asleep?” he asked.

She nodded and took a seat. He pulled out his cigarettes and offered her one questioningly. Anna ignored it, so he lit it for himself. He leaned back in his chair and was about to say something else, but -

“We need to get back,” Anna spoke to the shadows firmly. “We don’t belong here.” She seemed like she was slowly coming through the fog she’d been in earlier that day. She was adjusting. She was having more and more clear moments. Thomas’s shock hadn’t had time to wear off when he first arrived - dates and places had been changing too quickly for him to get used to them. Even now, the longest he’d even been still without having the rug pulled out from under him, there was no certainty. Instead it all kept building on top of itself. Was this his last moment in 1914, or was it the next? The result was a restless anxiety that drove him to smoke like a man about to die.

“We don’t,” he agreed, exhaling.

“They’re waiting for me,” Anna spoke in a wandering sort of way again. “My husband. My son.”

_ Richard _ . He thought it but didn’t say it. His throat burned, and it wasn’t because he was smoking.  _ Phyllis _ .

“I can’t shift,” she declared. 

“I certainly hope you can’t,” he commented.

“I won’t.” There was something stubborn and desperate in her tone. Thomas wondered if Anna’s worst memories would torment her when (and if) she shifted. Wondered what they were. The small candle between them flickered. The summer night was warm in temperature, but empty in mood. Thomas still felt small and adrift, but Anna’s awareness and presence made everything else feel a little less big.

“Were we supposed to stop what happened today?” Anna was doing her own wondering. She looked at him now. “Were we supposed to warn Lady Cora about losing the baby? Is that why we’re here?”

Thomas took another drag, keeping his face neutral. If that was the reason, they’d solidly failed. And it was conceivable that could have been their purpose, given his existing knowledge of how it transpired. His thoughts drifted to O’Brien, who was probably still up and certainly experiencing her own version of hell. 

“I doubt it,” he muttered.

“And how could we have if it was?” Anna began tearing her own theory to pieces. “It was a horrible accident. And you said you only experienced your worst moments. This was a sad day, but not  _ my _ most horrible.”

Thomas decided to change the subject.

“I don’t think we can alter things too much,” he said. “Not if we’re skipping about.”

“How do you know?”

“I couldn’t change a thing - nothing that mattered. There were some moments I could manage to stay in a little longer if I did, but I always left eventually.”

“What did you change?” she was openly curious.

“What I had for breakfast.”

She fell silent again, hearing the resigned defeat in his voice.

“The only way to tell is to wait,” he told her, trying to give a little comfort. “Then we’ll have an answer.”

They watched the candle for a while, watched the wax trickle down the sides and harden into a widening pool at the bottom of the brass holder. They waited quietly, but only Thomas knew what it was they were waiting for. The minutes stretched into hours.

...

_ “And how long have you struggled with these inclinations, Mr. Barrow?” _

_ Thomas thought carefully before answering, “All my life.” And it was the truth. Though he’d never characterized his feelings for other men as a struggle. Finding happiness, maybe. Finding environments and opportunities where he could be himself could be exhausting and dangerous. Despite this, he’d only ever felt happiness with men. The shame came from other places. Other people. But maybe this therapy would change all of that. Maybe if he could be like other men, the world wouldn’t be so hard to live in. _

_ “Honesty is a virtue that will serve you well in these sessions,” Dr. Grant wrote down some notes, nodding approvingly. “Dr. Freud thinks that hypnotic suggestion is the best way to cure your affliction. I, however, think self-reflection is the best methodology. Coupled with modern medical procedure, of course. There’s no better source of change than from within yourself, and no better way to reinforce it than with medicine.” _

_ Dr. Grant smiled as if he was the first man to ever string those words together. “Do you have any questions for me?” _

_ “No.” It was a lie. He did, but felt unusually squeamish about asking them. He already felt naked enough. And though this man was giving him something he wanted, he didn’t want to bare more than he had to. Only what was asked of him, and only when absolutely necessary. Thomas refused to look like a fool. _

_ “Excellent. Then I think we should start with your childhood. Childhood insecurities often provide the roots from which inverts manifest. What was your relationship with your parents like?” _

_ Thomas took a deep breath. And turned inside himself. _

...

_ How had it all ended like this? Anna drew her knit shawl around her shoulders, regretting the absence of her coat. But she couldn’t have planned to bring it, not with the way she’d left. The streets were empty but for a few staggering drunks, the pubs having closed hours before. Windows that had been alight with laughter and good friends were now dark, and Anna wandered aimlessly from one side of the street to the other. _

_ What was she going to do? She couldn’t go home. She shuddered violently at the thought, and repressed the sudden urge to vomit. She had no home now. Her eyes felt moist, her throat felt raw. _

_ “Hullo, love,” one of the drunks on the ground slurred as she walked past. “Got a moment to spare? Stop for a chat?” His clothes were filthy from laying about in the slush on the street, and spittle was smeared into his scraggly beard. _

_ Anna felt a thrill of terror and crossed the street once more to avoid him. But when she got to the other side, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the man had hauled himself upright to start following her. _

_ “Wait!” he shouted. “Don’t leave! Pretty little thing...”  _

_ “Leave off!” she shouted back, voice trembling. The man’s face contorted in an instant. If anyone had gotten the impression he was a harmless lush before, the idea would quickly fade if they were in Anna’s shoes. _

_ “Too good to talk to me?” he was still pursuing her, however hindered he was by his drunkenness. _

_ At his last word Anna broke into a frenzied run, silently praying her ankles wouldn’t turn on the uneven cobblestones of the street. It was easy to leave the man behind, and she quickly lost sight of him, but she kept running. She didn’t stop until she could hardly breathe any longer, stopping to gasp for air and choke on exertion on an empty but well-lit street corner. She limped over to the nearest wall, keeping alert for any followers. _

_ And even though the ground was wet, Anna slid down and sat there. She heaved for air, gulping oxygen and swallowing the buds of her tears. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. It was almost like an embrace. She rested her chin on top of them. She couldn’t stay still for long, not with the night as cold as it was. But she could stay still for a moment. _

_ Curled up on the side of an empty street, she felt discarded. She was dirty, cold, and hungry. And so, so tired. Quietly, Anna cried. _

...

“What the devil are you doing down here?” Mrs. Patmore was a comical sight wearing the glasses the doctors had given her after her surgery, even when the fury of the sun blazed in the eyes behind them. Thomas and Anna were both startled awake, heads jerking up from the table. They both blinked, disoriented in the sudden blaze of light that lit the room - outside the windows, the barest of blue light of dawn was breaking up the blackness in the sky. 

“We’re still here,” Thomas mumbled, confused but not unhappy. Happy to be awake, happy to still be in one place. His dream had given him the impression the cycle continued again, but it was just one deep fear seeping into his sleeping mind. He tried to shake away the imagery of the prim and tidy office - he could almost smell it, a whiff of oiled leather and ink.

“I should say you are,” Mrs. Patmore continued her tirade. “Did you stay here all night?”

Anna sat up, something like a ghost of terror on her face, adjusting her lopsided robe. Mrs. Patmore visibly softened at the sight of her. Daisy peered around the cook’s comfortable girth, eyes wide with questions.

“We were...” Thomas tried to think of an explanation. He looked at Anna, and tried not to seem too helpless.

“Holding a vigil for the baby. For the family,” Anna somberly finished what Thomas had started. He noticed her gaze focused levelly on the totally spent candle melted onto the table between them - it was an ingenious fabrication pulled from minimal inspiration. Now he was trying not to seem too pleased.

Mrs. Patmore accepted this begrudgingly - she was eyeing Thomas in a way that made him feel very on-the-spot. She looked between the two younger servants like she was trying to solve a puzzle with a missing piece. It was believable that Anna was pious. But Thomas?

“That’s a lovely thought,” she eventually conceded, “but next time you’ll need to ask permission.”

“Do we need permission to pray, Mrs. Patmore?” Thomas couldn’t help asking, ignoring Anna’s discreet glare.

“You need permission to be in the servant’s hall all hours of the night, sure enough!” Mrs. Patmore snapped back. “Scared the living daylights out of me and Daisy.”

“They didn’t scare me,” Daisy piped in, the same social calculations running in her eyes that had been in Mrs. Patmore’s, but she was coming up with different solutions to the sums.

Mrs. Patmore rounded on the girl incredulously. “Is that the tea kettle I hear, crying for want of attention?”

Daisy frowned and sulked off - underling and surrogate daughter in one. It was a wonder of a social anomaly to observe. Once she was gone, Mrs. Patmore turned back to them and sighed.

“Watch yourselves. Before you know it, you’ll be flying too close to someone’s window. Now get upstairs and get changed before anyone sees you. Hurry - Mrs. Bird will be here to help with breakfast any minute,” she instructed tiredly (but with an especially pointed look at Thomas) before following after Daisy. Presumably to lovingly berate her charge a little more. They waited until the sounds of preparation resumed before speaking.

“We woke up in the same place,” he whispered to Anna, elbows propped on the table. “The same time - memory - whatever.”

_ Is that a good or a bad thing?  _

He was off-kilter at the sameness of it all. Why now? It occurred to him this had been the first time he’d actually slept since the whole ordeal began. He didn’t feel rested, however - instead the dreams he’d had stayed stuck in his mind.

“Do you know what this means, Thomas?” Anna said. He turned to look at her as he cleaned up the ash from his spent cigarettes. Her expression was tight and grim. 

“What?” He was preoccupied with his need to shave, and drunk on the first taste of stable consistency he’d had in ages.  _ We’re buggered? _

“It means we have to find a way to save your job.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	6. 1914

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas enacts a plan without Anna's input.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: References to miscarriage, instances of period-typical homophobia

_ Early August, 1914 _

Thomas’s immediate response to Anna’s revelation was an ugly, “Crucified Christ.” And then, “Wait...no, that won’t work.” He was focused intently on the smooth grain of the table.

“What won’t work?” she asked, again clueless to the shortcuts his mind was taking, and willing to overlook his vulgar language - she was fit to use some herself.

“I never gave them the chance to fire me, did I?” he pinched the bridge of his nose, but looked ready to start raking his hands down the length of his face. “I left to train for the R.A.M.C. And I can’t do that again. I can’t leave - but I’ve already talked to Dr. Clarkson. What shite...”

“If you don’t find a way to stay at Downton, we won’t be in this together anymore,” Anna added, feeling unhelpful. “How will we find our way back?”

“You don’t reckon I realize that?”

“Sorry.”

“Crack on, you two!” Mrs. Patmore’s voice came to them from the kitchen. “You’re whispering like willow trees but I can still tell you’re there. It’s the eyes that’ve gone, not me ears! ”

“I’ll try to think of something,” Thomas told Anna as they mobilized to pretend they’d spent the entire night somewhere they should have been. They slipped up the stairs and moved quickly, but not quickly enough. Maybe it was because of Lady Cora’s crisis that she was up so early, but O’Brien was already gliding down to the servant’s hall. There was a moment of tension as they passed each other.

She gave Thomas an expectant, intrigued look - wanting some kind of answer to all the questions she was silently asking him with the simple quirk of her eyebrows, the purse of her lips. Why were they up? Why was Anna in her pajamas? Why were the two of them together again?

“Later,” was the only thing Thomas told her, and Anna hoped it would suffice.

...

The day was a little grayer than the previous, and while it suited the general mood of the household, there was much tittering about how unfortunate it would be if it persisted until the party. But Thomas and Anna both knew the clouds would part, and the rain would dry up. And the trees, flowers, and grass would be more vibrant than ever when the war was declared. Nature would put it’s best foot forward.

O’Brien lit up beside him in the lull between breakfast and luncheon. She was still licking the wounds of her conscience, and trying to patch them with nicotine. And trying to deflect her self-hatred onto other targets - something Thomas was dismayed to discover.

“It’s later,” she drolled. “Now, are you going to tell me what you were up to last night? Hopefully nothing Mr. Carson wouldn’t approve of.”

Thomas coughed awkwardly. "We held a vigil."

"A vigil?" there was derisive mirth in her voice. “I doubt that.”

"Don't go spreading it around. It'll destroy my reputation as a moral scourge," he said dryly.

“Well if you’re finally taking a liking to the fairer sex, you’ll be hard-pressed to find companionship in our Saint Anna. You might want to start lower on the scale of virtue and work your way up.”

To say Thomas was surprised at the way she spoke to him was putting it mildly. A familiar kind of cold heaviness formed in his chest at her words. How long had those words been stored out of sight inside of her, or was his sudden association with Anna at this point in time really that alarming to her? Suddenly he was unsure of everything about O’Brien, but very certain he didn’t want to talk to her anymore.

"You're upset," he said shortly, letting her know she had made a misstep. Even if it was in jest. "But if you think I’m going to take much more of your harassment you’ve got another thing coming. It’s not me you’re angry with. So crawl out of my arse."

Under his words there was the threat of retribution that he never could have achieved when he was first this young. It made O’Brien pause in an unexpectedly tender way. She looked at him like he was a product of her good work. Which in a way, he was. Internally he shied from the assertion he’d become the person he was because of her - or anyone other than himself.

O'Brien let up.

"I'm sorry," she finally apologized airily. "Just keeping an eye out for your own benefit."

“Thanks. But I can manage on me ownsome. How’s her ladyship?” he changed the subject, and as he did so the ghost of a terrible but necessary idea began to take shape in his mind. It was an idea that would solve one major problem that faced them, but one that violated an unspoken contract. But really, it was just a grander version of something he’d done before, wasn’t it? It would just be more personal this time. The consequences would reach farther, shake deeper foundations.

“Better today, but still low,” O’Brien had the air of someone lingering on a topic they were trying not to sound too interested in.

“I think she’ll appreciate the attention you’re giving her,” he placed the thought delicately against her tower of unspoken anxieties. “Might make her reconsider getting a new lady’s maid.”

The look she gave him almost made him stop short - almost. Maybe he’d overplayed his hand. But how could she know? There was no reason for her to suspect anything from his end, not in that way. Not about that. So he just stubbed out his cigarette, and lit another one.

O’Brien followed suit, stubbing out her own and flicking the end away. “I don’t think there ever was a new lady’s maid,” she said bitterly. "Just a feeling I have."

“Thought you’d be happier about that.”

“Yes, well. Everything that’s happened....takes the satisfaction out of things, doesn’t it?” She was back to looking tired. “I’m going back inside. You should, too. Carson will chain you to William if you’re not careful.”

“Steady on!” But he couldn’t help a chuckle at the imagery.

_ If it were anyone but William, who knows? I might enjoy it _.

And then he got to thinking about Richard - and Richard’s hands on his. Richard’s voice and Richard’s eyes. The way he’d trail his fingers against Thomas’s cheek, the comforting weight of Richard’s body around his-

He couldn’t get caught in those thoughts now; the fact those sensations weren’t within his reach anymore put him in too black a mood. He’d entertained the thought of trying to ring him on the newly installed telephone in the servant’s hall, but knew Richard wouldn’t have his own yet. And even if Richard _ did _have a phone, what would Thomas say? Anything approaching the truth would alienate every sane man within his capacity to seduce.

“See you at tea,” O’Brien said goodbye, and left. When she was gone, Thomas found himself wishing Anna was there. Which was unusual. Maybe it was prompted by the sudden melancholy at the thought of Richard, and the realization of what he needed to do... 

It had to happen sooner than later - as quickly as he could manage it, in truth. If he waited until after the garden party, they would just think he’d cottoned on to his imminent sacking and was just trying to save his job. Thomas swallowed and took a deep, deep drag from his cigarette. Then he lit two more when that one was gone, and made quick work of those as well. They did little to numb his nerves surrounding the prospect which faced him - they just made him sick. 

But it had to happen. If he was to continue at Downton, it was unavoidable.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the empty courtyard, imagining that Sarah O’Brien was still standing there beside him. He tapped ashes to the ground.

Maybe he wasn’t that sorry after all. Just afraid.

...

The morning duties had consisted of more of the same - sheet changing, furniture dusting, grate blacking, and rug beating on rota. She hadn’t forgotten how to carry-out a single housemaid duty, nor had she lost her touch. She was careful with the breakables and excellent at tucking corners. But lord - was it boring. Gwen was tacitly avoiding her after yesterday’s misunderstanding, so she made the rounds with Lily. Lily was a better conversational partner than mildew, but not much else. Though she could effectively blacken a fireplace grate faster than Anna could change the linens on a bed, which was saying something. 

Anna was taking her afternoon tea in the servant’s hall while Mrs. Hughes finished sorting through the linens - she’d have a tidy pile of sheets for the housemaids to repair eventually, and call for them when they were needed. Until the time came to go and change before the gong, Anna was enjoying a cup of tea. William was seated in the general vicinity of somewhere appropriate for a member of the lower five, and Mr. Carson sat comfortably at the head. Mrs. O’Brien was fussing primly with some lace on a collar, a sick look plastered on her face. They all waited in gently awkward silence for others to trickle in and for tea to be served; a small tiding to get them through until their late supper. Without the catharsis of Thomas and William’s fight the night before, melancholy still hung heavy around necks downstairs. Every ordinary duty had been quiet and heavy. It was hard to know what words and actions were appropriate, but given her personal experience with losing children Anna had some idea of where to start.

“We haven’t had the chance to talk since you got back,” John took a seat beside her, keeping his voice low.

“You’re right. It’s been too long,” she offered him his own cup, but John silently declined.

He shook his head. “What a time we’ve had lately.”

“I feel for her ladyship,” Anna told him, for John’s statement could be about little else.

“You're kind - of course you do,” he already held her in such high esteem.

“How is his lordship?”

“He's still torn up. Losing a son and all - he's crushed.”

“Anyone would be," her memory centered on their difficulty conceiving. The false starts.

“You never know. It might happen again, if it's happened already,” he sounded a little too idealistic, and Anna found herself hoping he wouldn’t posit the thought to Lord Grantham.

“I don't think it's going to happen that way, dear.”

Mr. Carson's interrogative eye slid from his newspaper to Anna, as did O’Brien’s. William was too preoccupied with re-affixing his mourning band around his arm to notice her gaffe.

“Mr. Bates,” Anna corrected herself, blushing. But John didn't seem to mind - he was pleased and amused.

“Are you _ that _ comfortable with him already?” O’Brien muttered quietly, but not quietly enough. 

“What business is it of yours?” John glared across the table, and Anna just ignored her. She hoped a part of Thomas’s elusive plan involved taking her down a few pegs.

Mr. Carson cleared his throat.

Daisy appeared, as if summoned by the noises of awkwardness. She seemed in bright spirits, being one of the more direct recipients of Mrs. Patmore’s improved mood. If the girl had been glum about being at the shrill end of the cook’s recent misfortune, she was now basking in her newfound sense of (relative) peace. She had the good sense to keep it muted, but was noticeably trying to infuse others with her good mood through attention to kindness.

“Are you all ready for tea?” she chirped.

“I’m settled, thanks,” Anna motioned to her cup.

Thomas wandered in, looking a little lost. He practically floated from the doorway to the seat he took next to O’Brien.

“Any declarations of love you’d like to make, Thomas?” O’Brien quipped, looking sly but still green-tinged. “Apparently some of us have taken to flirting at tea-time.”  
“No,” he looked confused and sounded irritated - not up for the game.

Anna frowned at her.

...

Thomas was in a daze serving dinner. He’d been completely adrift during tea - he hadn’t responded to Anna’s innocent questions, O’Brien’s less-innocent questions, or Bate’s barbs in any substantial way. The feeling had been building from the morning conversation with O’Brien in the courtyard to this moment, and it took much focus to keep from tossing a seafood platter all over the Dowager Countess. He doubted the woman would appreciate having crab legs stuck in her diminutive pompadour - but knew with certainty that if he did, she'd say something dry, acidic, and hilarious to the outside observer. It would all work to his advantage, he reasoned. His nerves. His distance during tea.

He just needed to get through dinner. He could make it through two more courses without running into Carson or William. Anna kept giving him appealing looks as she and Gwen helped hand off the serving platters, but he couldn’t muster the pluck to respond. It was enough - for now - that she knew he had a plan. She couldn’t know everything. Not yet.

...

Thomas hovered outside the door to the library. The ladies had been served in the drawing room - except Lady Cora, who was still recovering. They were content with their drinks, and the morose but attentive William would be there to tend them. They’d soon start peeling off to bed anyhow, and what Thomas was planning to do was more important to the Crawley’s than Thomas’s fulfillment of his duties. Which was saying something. He pushed through to the library.

“Thomas?” Mr. Carson rumbled his name like a warning immediately upon noticing him. “Is something the matter in the drawing room?”

Lord Grantham turned from the fireplace, and Mr. Matthew followed suit. Pharaoh, the miserable-tempered dog, stared balefully at him from his plush position on the rug. Thomas longed for the future days of Isis - she was less territorial and freer with her affection as a general rule. The drinks in their hands were newly refreshed, chips from the icebox glittering in crystal glasses - opening the flavor of their bourbon as it melted. They looked at him in an absently expectant way, like they were more interested to see how he left the room than find out why he’d entered in the first place.

“I have something to tell your lordship,” he looked at Carson, still standing in the corner. The older man watched, hawkish. Thomas felt very much a mouse. 

“Alone - If you’ll allow it.”

After a moment of contemplation Lord Grantham nodded. Carson gave Thomas a bushy glare and whispered instructions as he walked past, “Don’t waste too much of their time. Think carefully before you share what you plan to.”

_ You don’t need to worry about Bates. That sinking ship left port fourteen years ago. _ Thomas felt a faint curl of annoyance at Carson’s implied rebuke, but the jittery heat he felt inside quickly overrode it.

Mr. Matthew remained.

“Just you, milord. If it’s not impertinent to ask,” he tacked the qualifier on the end.

Grantham gave his heir a look that conveyed some small breed of apology. With all the class and taste of someone befitting his social station, Mr. Matthew took the silent cue and left. And then it was just Thomas and his lordship - and the dog. His employer looked at him expectantly.

“What is it you would like to discuss?”

Once he started there would be no going back. He just hoped all the chips would fall where he desperately wished them to. Thomas took an imperceptible steadying breath.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry for what happened yesterday. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

“Thank you, Thomas. Truly,” Lord Grantham had turned gray, angled himself towards the fire, and sipped his drink generously. “We appreciate your prayers. Is that all?” The older man still seemed eager to be rid of him - but for grief or a grudge over thievery was anyone’s guess.

“No, I’m afraid it’s not. It’s about...Mrs. O’Brien.”

The Lord’s head turned up to him slowly. An unnatural and graceful swivel. Posed. Poised.

“What about O’Brien?”

“She came to me yesterday in the courtyard,” Thomas began slowly, trotting out the story like he’d rehearsed in his head, “and said something awful had happened. That Lady Cora had lost the baby...”

A beat. A moment of silence filled with possibility both tantalizing and horrifying.

“Then Miss O'Brien told me...she said she’d done it”

Lord Gratham was unresponsive for such a long time, Thomas wondered anxiously if he didn’t understand. If Thomas would have to repeat the whole thing, rake over the sordid details, he was sure the attempt would fall apart in some way. He opened his mouth warily to-

“This is a serious accusation,” Lord Grantham’s words were thick, difficult. “And impossible to prove.”

“I realize that, sir,” the adrenaline of fear was coursing through him. His face felt as starched as his livery. He held his hands behind his back, clenching and unclenching fists out of sight.

“How do you account for your part in all of this?” Lord Grantham still clutched his drink in his hand, but ignored it. He came away from the fireplace close to Thomas. It was as close as they’d been since Thomas last valeted for him. He could smell the alcohol on his breath, the tobacco from his cigar. Thomas stood his ground. Told himself he’d faced worse.

“She...confides in me, Miss O'Brien does. She knows I can’t tell anyone.”

“And yet, you are telling me now,” he was suspicious. Thomas had no choice but to continue.

“Because I’m not afraid of her any more. I can’t be - not after what she’s done.”

“Afraid?”

“She knows things about me,” Thomas swallowed. It was all feeling less and less like a performance. “Things that would ruin me.”

“You’re saying she’s blackmailing you.”

“Yes. To lie and steal and all sorts of rot.”

Lord Grantham stepped back. Eyed him. “With what ruin is she threatening you?”

And now came his biggest personal gamble. If Thomas was still the praying sort, he’d send a plea for leniency to a higher power.

“The kind that relates to love. Love that cannot be spoken of or practiced freely.”

Thomas waited. For the shout, the disgust. But instead Robert Crawley just looked at him. Deeply assessing. Like he was peering into the core of him - Thomas’s knees felt weak to wonder at what he saw. He didn’t move back any father, nor did he remove his eyes from Thomas’s. The intensity was difficult to stand - with each passing second Thomas felt more and more raw. Peeled.

“Carson!” Lord Grantham called, and at the sound of the butler’s entry Thomas readied himself for the worst case scenario. That Carson’s large hands would fasten around his shoulders and throw Thomas into the gravel drive - that the casual acceptance of his nature in 1920 was not viable in 1914.

“Yes, milord?” Carson took in the sight of Thomas and Lord Grantham frozen like a tableau vivant with alarm.

“Bring Mrs. O’Brien to me. Immediately.”

“I’ll fetch her straight away. Thomas - ?”

“Thomas is to stay.”

And then Carson was gone, and once more it was just Thomas and Lord Grantham. The air felt heavy. Thomas itched to inch back, get even more space between them, but he feared what would happen to him if he did. Even if what he knew what he feared wasn’t within Lord Grantham’s capability to commit.

“Your lordship-”

“I want to hear what she has to say,” Grantham was quiet but firm. “When she comes in, tell your story. And we’ll see how she responds.”

Thomas would’ve rather put a molten-hot spoon in his mouth. They stood that way - Thomas shivering and awkward, his lordship taught and vibrantly alert - until Carson returned with O’Brien in tow.

Like Carson before her, O’Brien took in the tense interpersonal display in the library. It put her on guard, Thomas could tell. His hand had been tipped, at least a little. She eyed him warily, the suspicion of unnamed betrayal gnawing on her. 

“You wanted to speak to me, milord?” she hung back slightly.

“Yes,” Lord Grantham straightened, his expression darker than any Thomas had ever seen him wear. There was the fury of a stolen son behind his rage. “Thomas has made some allegations against you, O’Brien.”

He glanced at Thomas. “Go ahead.”

Thomas didn’t turn to look at her. It would be easier that way.

“She thought her ladyship was putting out an advertisement for a new maid. It made her angry,” he began. O’Brien caught on immediately. She stiffened beside him.

“Wait, your lordship, Thomas is-”

“Let Thomas finish.”

“She didn’t know that the advertisement was for the Dowager Countess. So when her ladyship took her bath yesterday-”

“Stop it!” O’Brien hissed, horrified and confused. She didn’t know yet, for certain, the true reason behind the advertisement. And now it came to her wrapped in the revelation of her wrong-doing.

“- she slid some soap under the bath. Knowing that when her ladyship stepped out, she would slip. Injure herself.”

“What do you have to say to that?” Lord Grantham was drawn to his full height. Everything about him was frigid. Carson was staring even more wide-eyed than before at the drama unfolding before him, looking between Thomas, O’Brien, his lordship - and back again.

“I-It’s not true!” O’Brien’s voice deepened in desperation. 

“She’s been saying hard things for weeks,” Thomas continued without wavering. “Horrible things and wishing harm, illness. She had me steal wine for her, told me her dark thoughts when she was drunk. I tried to take from of Mr. Carson’s wallet because she needed to pay a debt. She asked me to take a snuffbox of yours, milord, and use it to frame Mr. Bates. She wanted me promoted so I could relay your secrets to her - since she already has her ladyship’s.”

“I-I've been helping her, caring for her. Why would I do that if I’d hurt her ladyship?” O’Brien was beginning to sound hysterical, and Thomas couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy, for he knew all too recently how it felt to be caught off guard by the impossible. There was no reason for her to expect this - no way to prepare for it. 

“Because you feel guilty. Don't try to deny it,” he couldn’t keep a slight waver from his voice, but it looked like it was working in his favor.

“I bloody well will deny it!” she spat, finally rising to anger.

“You put the soap on the floor. It was an accident at first, but then you decided to leave it there. You nudged it with your foot, just out of sight. You picked up one half, and told her about the other so it wouldn’t look so bad. You thought about going back, but then it was too late.”

“He’s lying! All of this is untrue,” O’Brien was shrill now. “He’s done it all, and he’s making it up to get me bounced out!” She was on the fragile edge, now. He just needed to push a little more.

He kept his gaze fixed on Lord Grantham, who surveyed the two of them. “You deserve to lose your place here.”

“Why are you doing this-”

“You've killed, Sarah-”

“-I don’t understand, you said-!”

“-and I won't be a party to it.”

“_ YOU WERE NEVER PARTY TO IT _!” 

O’Brien gasped after her outburst. Everyone was still. 

It was all unraveled. 

Something in her deflated at the slip of those three damning words. She deflated until nothing was left but the disappointment of her comeuppance. And as she deflated, the others rallied.

“Mrs. O’Brien, you are dismissed,” Lord Grantham was curt. Withering. It wasn’t often that Thomas saw similarity between the man and his eldest daughter, but he did now. 

“Carson, take her upstairs to collect her things. She is to leave this house without reference and without pay.”

“No, your lordship -!”

As Carson secured her in his grasp, she lashed out, raking the only bare flesh of Thomas's she could reach with her outstretched fingers - the back of his left hand. Thomas recoiled, spinning to look at her now. Reckon with what he'd done. When their eyes met, Thomas saw that flint-like glint in hers that meant she still thought she could destroy him - tit for tat. Her life was crumbling around her and Sarah O’Brien still wanted to twist the knife.

“Do you know what he _ is _?!” she shouted as Carson struggled to wrangle her away, all shifting limbs and feisty heel-digging. “How can you trust anything he says when he’s a-”

“What you are about to imply about Thomas and the morality of his person is a meaningless and narrow assessment of character. I suggest you take the opportunity to leave before higher powers than mine are sought to reconcile your crimes. Leave - while you still have a little dignity.”

Thomas blinked in shock at the eloquence of his lordships defense of him. He held his hand to his chest - it stung - and watched as his companion-turned-nemesis disappeared. He half expected to see her fingers claw in a last mad grasp at the door frame, but she’d completely vanished from sight. 

“Are you alright, Thomas?”

“Ah - yes - milord,” he let his hand drop to his side. He was reeling in the wake of his apparent success. High on a rush of unnamable emotions.

“We are indebted to you,” Lord Grantham had color in his face again - he was no longer the grey ghost of a mourning father. How long it would last was hard to tell, but it would be at least as long as it took for O’Brien to cross the outside threshold. “We will never be able to repay you for your honesty.”

“I don’t need repayment,” maybe he was pushing his luck with that one - maybe they’d end up sacking him after all.

“Your secret is safe with me,” the fierceness was still there, but it was not frightening. Yet Thomas was reluctant to accept it as the comfort it was obviously meant to be. “No one will know.”

“But, Mr. Carson-”

“Has heard nothing. And if Mrs. O’Brien told him on her way out, I will order him to secrecy. I will use discretion. You have my word.”

It was a large and small comfort all at once. The permissive verdict from Lord Grantham was a godsend, but if the future-past was any indication of Carson’s opinion, Thomas’s everyday life was in danger of gaining another familiar glaze of of disdain.

...

“Are we starting without Mrs. O'Brien?” Daisy asked. “She always likes chicken pie.”

The meal, though a little heavy for a summer night, smelled delicious. Three pies sat in the middle of the table, steaming from the oven and covered with prettily decorated crusts. There wasn’t any need for them to be so, but it looked to Anna like Mrs. Patmore had given Daisy leave to practice pastry shapes. Little flowers and indeterminable animals lined the edges, small cuts formed a lattice-work pattern in the middle for heat to escape.

“Mrs. O'Brien is no longer employed at this house,” Carson spoke with low firmness.

“What’s happened?” John spoke up from beside Anna. 

The sudden departure of O’Brien was stunning - Anna shot a glance at Thomas, who did not return it. The table lit with the excited chatter of speculation running the gamut from mundane to wild. The only one hanging back from contributing was Thomas - he seemed much more interested in his cutlery, straightening it precisely next to his plate like it was on display for the upstairs dinner.

“What do you think happened?” John muttered to her directly, the puzzle of the situation alive in his voice and eyes.

Anna thought. “Something...unexpected, I’d wager.”

“I will speak of the matter no further,” Carson easily cut through the cacophony. “Any information you learn from here on will be granted to you by Lord and Lady Grantham themselves.”

Mrs. Hughes raised her eyebrows at that, taking a pointed sip of wine. But Anna knew Mrs. Hughes would inevitably be the first one informed after dinner. It wasn’t just the day’s events the housekeeper and butler shared in her sitting room over sherry - it was secrets. Anna was gaming to be the second, sherry or no sherry.

Thomas sat across the table, empty chair beside him. O’Brien’s absence was as notable as a penny dreadful missing it’s cover. But it was not regrettable. Anna watched him stare at the pie and Carson interchangeably. He looked more drawn and pale than usual.

_ Why does he look so glum? Didn’t it work? _

She picked up a basket of rolls and extended it to him, intending to give Thomas an opportunity to signal success or failure.

“Don’t you think these turned out well, Thomas?” she asked. John gave her an odd look, which she repaid with a pleasant smile. “Wouldn’t you like one?”

He ripped his eyes from his plate. “Yes,” he sounded normal, if muted. “I might save one for later.”

Message received.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to take food from the table?” William wondered through a mouthful of food.

“You are not,” Carson affirmed, glaring. Anna watched Thomas deflect the cowing look, water from a duck’s back. He took two rolls.

“These look delicious,” Thomas told her.

“Yes, they do,” John said flatly, and took two of his own.

...

“Tell me everything - did it work? How did you do it?” Anna implored him. If they’d been back at the cottage she shared with her family, she would’ve put on some tea. And then the two of them could take their time. But she wasn’t married and the cottage wasn’t refurbished. So they were in the boot room, instead, polishing the girl’s shoes for tomorrow. The hallboys would be pleased, at least. She’d said goodnight to John and he’d made his ascent - with his bad leg, it was unlikely he’d come back down. 

“She’s gone. It worked. That’s all there is to it, really,” Thomas was attacking a pair of Edith’s Mary Jane heels.

“I know that,” Anna drawled almost playfully, rolling her eyes. “But what did you_ say _? She’s gone and you’re staying. It must’ve been something that astounded them.” 

He gave a single shrug. “I told them that she blackmailed me. To steal and all,” he paused. “Because of how I am.”

Thomas didn’t seem wary - but he did sound unsure.

_ Will he ever fully trust me with this part of himself? _ She tried not to take it as a personal slight. 

“And it’s alright?” she ventured.

“Well I’m not out on my ear, so I’ll count my eggs now they’ve hatched.”

“And how many chicks do you have?”

“One.”

Anna snorted.

“I’ve remembered how much your husband hated me,” Thomas seemed melancholy in spite of his joke.

“Oh, well,” she stopped polishing her pair. It would be easier to convince Thomas he’d been born on the planet Venus than pretend John was endeared to him. “He just needs to get to know you. You’ve got the lay of it now, don’t you? It should be easier the second time around. Less trouble for all of us.”

“If you say so. But you could only just call us friends from when we left. I don’t know how to go about it.”

“What about friend-_ ly _, if not friends?”

Thomas made a quiet noise of disbelief. “That’s a far stretch of the meaning. You, though - you’re much easier to get along with.”

_ Well, I’m not going to argue with that. _John was not everyone’s cup of tea when it came to interpersonal relations.

“If I start speaking for you, it should soften him up,” she insisted.

“Do I _ want _him to softened up?”

“If we want an easier time of it, you do. I can’t keep coming up with excuses for spending time with you.”

“So, _ I _ ride the coattails of _ your _ good reputation to redemption?” he sounded resentful.

“If you want to call it that,” Anna shrugged and paused. “Or you could call it being friends.”

Now Thomas stopped his polishing. He was pensive. “Let’s take it in steps. It’d be odd if we acted too familiar, too quickly. People have already noticed.”

“Yes,” she pointed out. “But we can just call that good groundwork. We’ll start from there.” 

Thomas seemed to be emerging from the shell he’d drawn around himself, the divide between the two of them dissolving in the face of their resolve.

“Alright,” he didn’t bother to wipe his hand because Anna’s own was also stained with polish. He extended it, and she took it to make the pact. One decisive up-down motion. “Friends.”

It was the first time she’d actually called him one. 

...

_ “I don’t need to tell you that this is a criminal offense.” He did not need to tell him, but hearing the words made him burn all the same. _

_ “We hadn’t done nothing.” _

_ “But you were hoping to do something if Alfred hadn’t come in.” It was a horrible, horrible mistake. No - a trap. Baited and set just for him. And it’d worked, hadn’t it? _

_ “It’s not against the law to hope, is it?” If he didn’t have hope, he’d have hardly anything at all. The lump in his throat felt like someone was strangling him, it was a wonder he could talk so clearly. All he had to protect him now was words. _

_ “Don’t get clever with me. When you should be _ horsewhipped _ !” _

_ Thomas stood still and bit the inside of his cheek. He tasted blood. _

...

Lady Mary perched on the edge of the bed, a vision in a tea dress, and Anna dutifully did up her shoes. There was an element to their later relationship that was missing in the present, Anna sensed. The Pamuk scandal had already occurred (and was fit to raise its head again). Anna remembered it as the original lightning rod for their closeness. But now, reliving every moment - every morning, afternoon, and evening dress - she realized there was so much more to their closeness then being Lady Mary's body servant (in the ironic_ and _ the traditional sense). It was too late to make subtle assertions about Mr. Matthew’s suitability; the rejection ultimately came from him, and it approached in-step with the war and the garden party. It would be a global conflict and a pandemic before Lady Mary and Mr. Matthew finally found their way back together - for Anna and John the term would be the same, plus a prison sentence. All the tragedies that lay before them were a repellent and ominous selection of personal pain. Anna wondered if it had to happen - if it didn't, what could they do to stop it? And if their futures didn't play on their horrid downbeats, would she still be Lady Mary's trusted companion? She swallowed the bile that threatened to choke her.

“Come on a walk with me?” Mary asked.

“I’m going to read to mama,” Sybil tenderly pushed at a pin in her updo, sitting in the vanity chair. She was still getting used to having her hair up, even after spending all of the London season out and presented. “I think it helps her pass the time. Have you asked Edith?”

Mary scoffed.

“What’s happened now?” Sybil no longer wilted in the face of her sisters’ spats like when she was younger; she investigated them, then distanced herself.

“It’s not what’s happened, it’s what she’s _ done _,” Mary flexed her foot.

“Well, whatever it is, try not to let it get in your head,” Sybil left in an innocent flurry of lavender organdy. It was still surreal to see her - William, too, though Anna hardly had time to process it.

Mary shook her dark head infinitesimally. “Her kindness puts us to shame.”

“She has a gracious heart, milady, but so do you.”

“Really, Anna, you don’t need to lay it on so thickly,” but Anna could see she took secret comfort in it. She needed someone to think she was good, in some way. She’d been partially cut from society at this point already, and sensed she was about to face a different kind of break.

Lady Mary flexed her foot again. "What’s happened to my white pair?"

“They need to be resoled. I'm going to send them to the shoemaker in the village.”

“That's good - I wasn't planning on wearing them for anything important.”

Anna stated gathering up the clothes the girls had changed out of, a collection of expensive and suitable morning-wear. Internally she called them “girls” as a demonstration of the distance she detected between their levels of maturity, but even in the original 1914 Anna had a decade on Lady Sybil. She was twenty-eight. Three years past the typical age a housemaid graduated from service and became a coveted, skilled wife of a tradesman or a tenant farmer. She’d had her fair share of prospects. Eager men from the village who saw her at church on Sunday and tried their luck at courting her. But she’d turned down every one, because Anna knew her career was something freer and more dependable than marriage to a man she’d walked out with for a year. Lady Mary watched her in silence, observing the way Anna’s carefully situated the gowns on stuffed satin hangers, laying them out smooth and flat.

“Has there been much excitement downstairs?” Mary eventually probed.

“About Mrs. O’Brien?” Anna hung Mary’s gown in the wardrobe, folding Sybil’s over her arm for transport. This was the time to play dumb - if Anna confessed knowledge, the question of where it came from would expect an answer. “They aren’t telling us much, but I’ve gathered it was rather dramatic.”

Lady Mary considered this, and she turned her whole gaze to Anna as she did so. There was something desperate ,and hard in it. “Anna, I would tell you if I were ever going to replace you.”

“I wouldn't doubt it, milady.”

“You never need worry about your position, either way.”

“I think you'll need to talk with Mrs. Hughes to be sure about that,” Anna made light humor. It did not have the alleviating effect she was hoping for.

“I'm going to trust you with a secret,” Mary said solemnly.

“Yes?”

“I'm telling you this not to burden you, Anna. But because you're keen, and I know you can handle the truth.”

Anna paused. _ What can be so serious to her about Mrs. O’Brien blackmailing Thomas? _

“Mama's miscarriage wasn't an accident,” Mary began, and it wasn’t long before the whole secret story of the night before was unspooled.

...

He was cutting through the servant’s hall to help William with the silver when Carson caught him.

“Thomas, I’d like to speak to you,” Carson beckoned him towards the pantry. Carson’s Pantry. Thomas stepped into the space reluctantly, frowning at the other man’s decor. He’d been tacitly avoiding the room given it’s status as an undeniable reminder of his displacement. His things were not on the desk, the furniture he’d replaced was still there. Thomas eyed the corner where the triptych has stood, half-expecting to see it’s ghostly outline, twisting the limits of time and common sense. The corner stood empty. All the same, Thomas felt compelled to hang closer to the door than Carson expected. He was putting as much distance between himself and even the _ idea _of the horrible painting as possible.

Being stared down across a desk was not an unfamiliar experience, but it was one he was bitter to find himself in again. He decided against toeing the line and met Carson’s eye steadily, his chin lifted in defiance at the attempted intimidation. He was this man’s equal, even if he couldn’t act like it.

“Closer, if you please.”

Thomas stepped a little closer. He would toe _ one _line. But if O’Brien had let slip anything at all, and Carson started making salacious accusations, he was going to fight them. He probably looked hard and surly. He found it hard not to be, given the circumstances. Anna’s vow of friendship could not allay the casual cruelty of a bigot.

Carson ignored his justifiable glowering and launched into a carefully planned lecture, “His lordship has told me that you aren't to be scrutinized in the wake of Mrs. O'Brien's ...departure. That you are to be considered innocent of your wrong-doings. That you were the victim of manipulation.”

He paused for dramatic effect. In an ideal lecture-subject, this would be a moment filled with explanation of remorse or repentant gratitude. But Thomas was no so such subject, and passed on the opportunity to submit his appeal. He was waiting, analyzing Carson’s words for masked prejudice.

“I can only say Thomas, that you should be careful in the future. You've a reputation here. One that your alliances have sullied. Now that she's gone, whether or not you've told the truth, you have been issued a blank check. You get another chance at a first impression in your fourth year of employ. I do not need to remind you that this is not a chance many people come across in their lives, nor do many have the chance to earn their living at Downton Abbey. Make your new impression a good one.”

Thomas waited for more, but mercifully none came. If O'Brien had unleashed the last weapon in her arsenal, Carson was reigning in his personal response. Maybe Lord Grantham's promise held some weight to it. But he couldn't pin all his hope for dignity on someone else's word. He let down his guard, but only slightly.

_ Well. That was condescending. But I’ve been chewed on worse, haven’t I? _

“Thank you, Mr. Carson. You won’t be disappointed.” And he wouldn’t give him the chance to be, would he?

Carson glanced at Thomas’s lightly wounded hand. “Is your hand alright?"

"Yes, Mr. Carson."

"Good,” the butler straightened, fixing Thomas in his sights for one last reinforcement, one last warning. “This means no more lying. No more deceit, and no more bullying. I don’t want you dragging Daisy in here again to try and make some point.”

_ What if someone bullies me first? _

“I understand.” It was grating to make a promise to Carson he’d already made to himself.

“I’m glad we are in agreement. Now, go finish helping William with the silver for the garden party,” Carson sighed and then added, almost commiserating, “He's still in a bit of a state.”

Thomas nodded stiffly and headed towards the silver pantry, imagining William slowly buffing and polishing the serving trays. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand it in some way - he had a bit more sympathy to met out to the other footman, now. There was less resentment and jealousy clouding his mind, other than what already underscored his interactions with men who could live as themselves without scorn. William had lost his mum. Thomas would let William clean the large and easy things, and he’d take on the pieces with details that needed more going over. As an act of kindness. It was the best allowance he could make without the authority to excuse William from doing it at all.

He’d no sooner stepped foot outside the pantry then Anna appeared at his side, almost as if she’d been waiting just outside the door for Carson to release him.

“Courtyard,” Anna growled at him. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her use such a tone before. She stared at him when he failed to immediately mobilize. “Now, Thomas.”

He had suspicions about what had gotten her so riled, but he wasn’t looking forward to having them confirmed. It was foolish to think he could’ve kept this one in the bag.

“I was going to help William with the silver...” but realizing the out was useless, he followed her.

She whirled on him the second Thomas closed the door behind him, skirts ballooning with her momentum. “You lied to me.”

“I didn't lie-!”

“You didn't tell me everything,” her jaw was clenched, and her head bobbed in time with her words. “About Mrs. O'Brien? That's _ lying _.”

_ Only if you’re getting technical about it! _

“I didn't want to hurt you with the whole truth,” and he meant it. “I - who told you? Lady Mary?”

She ignored him, and kept on pushing through her argument. Anna was readily making up for the light dressing-down he’d received minutes ago from Carson. “I can't believe you knew all this time. And you did _ nothing _.”

“What could I have done? By the time she told me the whole crock was already four years gone! Who would've believed a story like that about O’Brien and her ladyship? The timing, the soap? It’s a melodrama,” he held his hands open, an appeal for understanding.

“Her ladyship's...soap," Anna realized then just how soaked his luck was in the secret, and he watched the anger distort her face. “Whatever you say, that didn't stop you from using the information to your own advantage - _ twice _!”

She paced in one furious circle, but it did little to ease her frustration, “How could she do such an evil thing.”

Anna said it not as a question but as a statement, and Thomas knew the answer (a brief moment and a regretful, irreversible choice) but didn’t think she wanted to hear it.

“All I know is she thought it were the worst thing she'd ever done,” he took a breath. He could remember the rainy night she’d told him, not long after Lady Cora had recovered from her bout of Spanish influenza. O’Brien had given him her confession between drags on her cigarette, punctuating the telling of events with the brightening circle of the burning end. 

“I'm sorry, Anna,” he paused, unsure of baring his assumptions. “I know you've...had your troubles.”

Her eyes narrowed, and it seemed a misstep. He moved forward with his apology.

“I'm sorry for all my part in this, past, present. But even if we could've stopped it...we couldn’t. It was the only way."

“Was it?” she cut in like a scalpel.

Thomas was getting irritated with the impossibility of the situation. Anna needed a little more flexibility, for both their sakes. They weren’t going to get through this with iron scruples. “If keeping me at Downton in this bloody mess of a disaster is important to you, _ yes _. It was.”

“We could have changed it!”

“And what then? What would we have done next, Anna?”

They exchanged steely, stubborn stares.

"Leave me alone for a while,” she finally said, short and sharp. “We don't want to look too chummy right away, besides.”

“No problem there,” Thomas turned and retreated back into the abbey before she could steal the last word. He took steadying breaths as he breezed past anyone who might’ve been brave enough to ask about his thunderous expression. He’d lost everything, everyone. He couldn’t even keep a firm grasp on the familiar which was still in his reach. 

William looked up with a start as Thomas barged into the silver pantry and liberated the intricately detailed serving spoons he was working on.

“Wha-?!”

“I’m cleaning the hard ones,” Thomas cut him off. “You just find the easiest piece here they want for the party and do it.”

“Why, are you saying I do a poor job?” William was on the defensive, and Thomas could scream.

“No. I’m getting you out of this pantry so you can actually enjoy your afternoon before tea. Are you going to keep whingeing about it? Because if you don’t like it we can switch back,” he brandished the spoons threateningly in William’s direction.

William eked out a confused, reluctant smile. “Thank you. I think.”

“You’re welcome.”

...

Anna had a hard time falling asleep. After ten years of sleeping beside John, being in her single bed was lonely. Gwen snored softly next to her, but it wasn’t the same. And she was so, so, so _ angry _ . She fisted the sheets in her hands to keep from beating them against... _ something _. And it was hot in the servant’s quarters. They had the window cracked open, but it just let in humid air. She knew it was unreasonable, in part - but she also knew she couldn’t let it go. It was too real, too personal.

Not yet. She missed so much. She missed the sounds, the sights, the smells, and the sensation of her life as she knew it. As she’d fought so long and hard for. Anna sniffed into her pillow, depending on the feathers to absorb her tears and quiet sadness. She’d give anything to hug Johnny to her like when he was still so new to the world, and he slept in a bassinet on her side of the bed. With her eyes closed she could almost imagine he was there.

...

  
_She never thought that getting her monthlies could be such a source of empty sorrow. It was one more indignity to add the physical discomforts that came with them. And when she _ _ went to bed with John, it was with fevered determination. There was always love, yes, but there was need beyond fulfillment, too. It was work. It was the first step they were required to take to achieve their desires. The act alone was not enough. That much was evident by the soiled Lister’s Towels in the washroom bin. _

_ She washed her hands in the basin and looked at her reflection in the mirror. What about her was so incapable? She pursed her lips until they were a thin line. Narrowed her eyes until the glassy look in them went away. Satisfied she looked happy enough, she turned off the faucet and left. _

_ “Any big plans on the morrow?” John gave her a light kiss on the cheek as she sat down at the table for dinner. Just the two of them. _

_ “Not as such,” she brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Just the usual.” _

_ “There’s comfort in that, sometimes.” _

_ “Yes,” she said. “For a while, at least.” _

_ And Anna found herself wishing that they would just go to bed - not to make fruitless love - but to sleep. Because she was tired. _

...

It was the morning before the garden party. He didn’t feel nearly as rested as he wanted to be. He’d had dreams he hardly cared to revisit; waking up in terror was becoming a nightly expectation, even if the horror the dream-memory explored was mundane. The tasks of the day yawned before them, a bottomless cavern of last-minute silver polishing and furniture moving. Breakfast was crushingly boring without any one to talk to, and Thomas found himself envious of the conversation Bates was clearly enjoying having with Anna. Anna - who was still darkly fuming from the night before, and who made no motion to offer him anything on her side of the table. When Thomas asked for the salt, just as a test, she actually went to the trouble of picking it up, handing it to Bates, and asking _ him _ to hand it to Thomas. It did not go unnoticed by the other staff, but it did go unremarked upon. Thomas picked at his eggs with the self-assurance that he did what he had to do, and she couldn’t be angry at him for the rest of however long they were stuck here - because that could be forever.

Someone who didn’t know Anna well couldn’t imagine the heat of her wrath, but Thomas knew her as the mastermind behind several well-orchestrated plots and schemes. She also just happened to be generally pleasant when she kept her devious tools locked away in their box. He slunk away from the table before the others, keen on catching William as he ironed the paper. And maybe, perhaps, trying to come off a little toothless. If the others had picked up on the rift between him and Anna, and Carson was scrutinizing his every move, it would be beneficial to build a buffer. If anything horrible or suspicious happened - which he hoped it didn’t - there would be no pinning it on him.

The smell woody smell of super-heated ink and paper wafted from the closet William liked to iron the newspaper in. It was idiotically far away from the kitchen, which meant he had to carry the iron a fair distance. When Thomas had been second footman, he’d managed the same task in the hallway - efficient for him, but not for anyone trying to get past.

“Can I see that William? Once you’re through with the front page.”

“I suppose,” the other footman sighed.

_ No ‘supposing’ about it, lad. _Thomas was even being polite about it, too. And after the spoons, yesterday? It didn’t have strings attached but it had to count for something.

William lifted the iron and gingerly held up the page for him to see.

**ENGLAND IS ON THE VERGE OF WAR**

**BELGIUM APPEALS TO GREAT BRITAIN**

**Invaded by Germany; Germans Fight on Two Frontiers**

“Think we’ll declare soon?” William asked him in a nudging way. An attempt at naive camaraderie that still chafed on Thomas’s sensibilities concerning the coming war.

“We’ll be at it before the end of the week,” and it occurred to Thomas that he could make all sorts of dishonest bets and collect a fortune with his knowledge of the future (assuming it stayed the same). But that sounded like something out of a cheap story, and made him think only of Miss Denker. If anything, being stuck in the past meant he was spared from interacting with her. After the Dowager Countess died, she’d retired to the village and developed the habit of hanging around the Grantham Arms. Which was a shame, because it was the best place within walking distance to get a drink. Unconsciously, Thomas began making plans for a convenient half-day.

“I sure hope so,” William put the paper down and shook a righteous fist. “I’m itching to give those huns whatfore.” 

He was beginning to sound like a bad Vaudeville routine Thomas had been convinced to attend in New York, which was Thomas’s cue to smile in a neutral way and make his exit. O’Brien was gone, Anna was angry, Phyllis wasn’t there, Richard didn’t know him yet. William was going to die. It was all too much to relieve, despite keeping his job. He had another go at it, but if he got sent away to Flanders and blown up before he had the chance to cash in on something he’d already earned in another life, what was the point of it all? He wanted another cigarette but couldn’t chance Carson’s interpreting that as neglecting his duties.

Germany was fighting a war on two fronts, and Thomas felt he was trying to hold his own against five. He was on his way to the kitchen to see if breakfast was ready to go upstairs when Daisy bustled past him, holding a large copper pot. An avenue of absolution - previously closed by time - suddenly presented itself to him. He could at least get one person on his side, even if it wouldn’t result in meal-time conversation.

“Daisy, a word?”

“I was just going to get some soda from the cupboard!” she was timid and reluctant to speak to him alone. Thomas could understand that, here. She was shy from the side-effects of their ill-fated courtship. For all she knew he was cornering her to rope her into a half-baked scheme. It was her good fortune that the only reason which compelled him to find her alone was one of apology.

“It’ll only take a second.”

Daisy eyed the kitchen nervously, expecting the hot-head of Mrs. Patmore or the stern comportment of Mrs. Bird to reel her back in. Maybe she was hoping for it. But she balanced the pot on her hip instead.

“Yes?” she started picking at a spot of tarnish. In Thomas’s recollection of her future, she would still handle the baking-soda and lemon solution with the care of a newcomer.

“I want to apologize.”

“What for?” she blinked.

“Well...the business with O'Brien and Bates. We-_ I _ put you out with all of it. Asking you to say things that weren’t true and all. So I'm saying sorry, now that Mrs. O'Brien is gone."

“...Thank you,” she kept absently picking at the tarnish. She was a servant limited almost entirely to below stairs, but she had a servant’s blank that could give Thomas a run for his money. “Is it Anna you like?”

Now it was Thomas’s turn to stand agape. “Pardon?”

“Is it Anna you fancy, and that's why you've been spending all that time with her? Why you tried to get Mr. Bates in trouble - because he fancies her, too?” she sounded resigned.

“No. _ No _, Daisy,” he couldn’t deny it fast enough. “I do not ‘fancy’ Anna.”

“It’s alright. Mrs. Patmore told me you weren't right for me, and that I weren't right for you. I didn’t want to believe her,” Daisy continued sadly.

“She’s right.” _ Very right _. Then realizing how that sounded, he added, “But you’re also smart.”

“Come off it, Thomas.”

“It’s true!”

She was wary to accept the compliment, but it had visibly bolstered something in her - she held her shoulders high and square in the way she did when building up to make a risk. 

“Can...can you do something for me?”

Thomas’s insides began to curdle as he imagined her asking for a consolatory kiss, or one last outing. It would be extremely bold of her, but it would also be just his luck. He figured it was too convenient to believe their brief dalliance could just dissolve into nothing, especially now he was actually trying to give it a sense of closure. He wished _ he _ had a copper pot to fuss with.

“Only, I’m going to apologize, you see - to William? And I think it would mean something if you would say your piece, like.”

Thomas was dumbstruck by her conviction. She read it as reluctance, and added more explanation to her already jumbled delivery, “Because we treated him so poorly?”

"I'll see what I can do."

Young Daisy’s face split into a blinding smile. “That’s wonderful! Please, do, it’d mean the world.”

He hadn’t even made a definite promise, but it was enough to send Daisy on her way happy to the point of bursting. Her conscience was soothed, her fears were evaporating, and Thomas couldn’t help his own small smile. There was a wistful recollection of the lower ten he’d hired as butler, living in 1928. He found that he missed something about all of them - they were young, bright things the house was lucky to have. But at this juncture the oldest of them would be - he did some math - four?

_ Bleeding Christ. _

Thomas briefly rubbed at a temple and sighed before summoning the energy to wade past Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Bird, dragons in their domain. It was a testament to Daisy’s strength she came out of this week alive.

...

Anna tucked the sheets around the corners of the beds with a fury she’d never done before, and Gwen noticed. But Gwen was still gunshy over their prior misunderstanding, and Anna could tell she was trying to enact her own version of giving her the “cold-shoulder”. She tersely carried out Anna’s instructions as they worked in tandem, and walked two paces ahead of her wherever they went. Conversation was non-existent. But Gwen was too kind and too close to her for that to last very long.

“Something the matter?” she finally asked after watching Anna wrestle angrily with a sheet that was reluctant to tuck evenly underneath the fifth bespoke mattresses they had to tend to. “It almost seems like you’re pretending that sheet has a certain name and face attached to it.”

_ This sheet is named Sarah O’Brien, and I’m still debating if Thomas is the right pillow case or the left. _

“What name or face would that be?” Anna wiped off her brow and tucked a strand of hair back into her bun. 

“Not mine, I hope,” Gwen responded, which drew a smile out of Anna despite of her black mood.

“No. It’s not yours.”

“Mr. Bates?” Gwen asked the question a little coyly. 

Anna flushed, “No, not Mr. Bates either. It’s nothing.” It was hard to abandon the scandalized instincts of a wife happy with her husband, and even more so to play along with the coquettish insinuations of unmarried women.

“Thomas?” Gwen tried again.

“Why ‘Thomas’?”

_ More right than you realize, Gwen _.

Gwen shrugged, gently moving around Anna so she could make her own attempt at a neat-looking corner. 

“It’s generally a safe guess. Keeps me covered.” She made a small noise of satisfaction when her corner turned out better than what Anna had attempted.

“Look at that,” she joked, “I’ll be making a run for head housemaid before you know it.”

“Don’t say such things,” Anna picked up the end of the comforter and Gwen took the other side. “You’ll be working as a secretary, soon enough.”

“You don’t know, though,” Gwen sighed, spreading it over the bed with Anna’s help.

_ Yes I do, actually _.

“No, you will be.”

“But the other day you said -”

“Nevermind what I said then,” Anna pulled the edges of the comforter straight and taut. The made-up bed was fit to bounce a coin off of. “It was a bad joke. And I’m sorry for it now.”

“Thank you for that,” Gwen smiled as she checked the biscuits in the glass jar next to the bed, and apparently found them in edible order and sufficient in number. 

“You’re going to get what you want, Gwen,” Anna spun it carefully to sound like encouragement, and not like knowledge. “There’s good fortune in your future.”

...

It was a beautiful day for a garden party. The breeze rustled through Anna’s hair in its simple updo, drying any beads of sweat that might have bothered her. The only thing that might have made it more pleasant was wearing a light organdy and lace dress and sheer stockings - much like the ones she’d dressed the Crawley daughters in. Or a parasol.

It was a horrible day for the declaration of war. There hadn’t been much time for the same build up of anticipation - the energy of the first time around had a month to percolate, for the news of the archdukes assassination to swirl around the servant’s hall as the newspapers speculated about what was to happen next. Tragedies and tensions leaking across the channel to bed themselves in London, in Manchester, in Leeds. But there had been none of that these past few days, given where Anna and Thomas had entered events. Talk at Downton had been almost exclusively about Lady Cora and this very party. 

And on this day, everything trundled on as it had done when war on the continent was the farthest of possibilities. Everyone acknowledged the precipice on which they stood, but no one truly thought the fall from the edge would be that long. They felt the landing would hardly shake them. So the ladies accepted fresh lemonades in dainty crystal glasses or flavored ices, and the gentleman watched each other play lawn games. The servants served.

“Do you want anything, milady?” she asked, sweet and gentle.

Lady Cora was curled, refined as she could look in her state, on a chaise lounge Thomas and William had moved onto the lawn. Tired bags still lingered under her eyes, speaking to nights spent dreaming with grief Anna knew all too well. Anna had propped her up with pillows and covered her in a blanket. In O'Brien absence, Anna was the one dressing and tending to Lady Cora until they found a replacement. A plate of Mrs. Patmore’s offerings was kept off to the side, but her ladyship was still eating and drinking like a bird. Anna wondered what she knew - she had to know it all, if Lady Mary did. But the ripples of O’Brien’s betrayal didn’t break the surface; her ladyship was placid.

“No, Anna. Thank you,” her eyes tracked her daughters’ routes around the party. Anna noticed she lingered on Lady Sybil and Lady Mary in particular. Lady Sybil was chatting too little with the right people and too freely with the wrong ones. Lady Mary and Matthew oscillated round and round one another, two planets whose orbits were inevitably going to collide.

“Might I check in with Mrs. Hughes to see if they need help in the servery?” Anna doubted they would need anything, but she needed a little air. A little distance. Being this close to a pain so similar to her own was suffocating.

“Yes, do. You’ve set me up splendidly.”

Anna left, careful not to look too happy to do so. She rounded the back of the servery, skirting the edges of the party. The “servery” was actually just the tent they were keeping the food and drinks supplied from. Daisy and William seemed chipper, Mrs. Hughes was attentive and on the prowl for any potential wrinkles in the day’s events that needed smoothing. Thomas was avoiding Dr. Clarkson with less and less tact - Anna frowned, sympathetic. She was feeling more inclined to extend an olive branch; they couldn’t afford to feud. And she expected he would be needing help avoiding army service soon.

“Pretty, isn’t it? Hard to believe the clouds are gathering on a summer day like this,” John spoke from behind her.

Anna startled, but settled into a smile. “You know clouds. They like to meet at inconvenient times.”

John made himself comfortable beside her, sent her a mischievous look. “My mother wrote me.”

“Oh? Oh...” Anna remembered the visit to Mrs. Bates’s house, ages ago in her mind but fresh in everyone else's. And what she’d learned, and forgotten to say. “I meant to tell his lordship-”

He waved her off. “Don’t trouble yourself with all that. His lordship has taken it in stride. My mother likes you, by the way.”

“I’m glad of that,” Anna found she was just as proud of the compliment the second time as she was the first.

“I gather she told you her version of events then? About Vera and me,” he was smiling but in his self-deprecating way. The one he gave her when she’d caught some part of him out.

“I trust her. And I trust you too, for that matter.”

“Then trust that despite your efforts, everything remains quite unresolved.”

Anna raised her eyebrows. “I think you’d be surprised just how effective my efforts can be, Mr. Bates.” She caught sight of Lady Cora, looking peaked. “I better get back.”

Vera. The war. She still held out hope that this strangeness would end, and they wouldn’t have to worry about any of it. But if it didn’t end, they’d need to start getting ready. Anna was bound and determined to prevent as much pain as she could manage, whether Thomas was willing to help her or not.

...

It was a welcome change to serve at the garden party without having to nurse the left side of his face - without having to slide away from the disapproving glances of country lords and ladies who actually looked at him long enough to notice his imperfect appearance. Since the fight with William had not happened, Thomas was spared that indignity. He did not have to try and wear scrapes and bruises with any kind of pride. The scratches on his hand were already fading scabs, and his feelings were intangible - much less conspicuous.

The tray of chilled drinks he held was balanced steadily as he wound his way through the scattered gathering. It belied his internal turmoil. He and Anna alone knew what was about to happen, and only he knew the true agonies that waited around the corner on battlefields. What did Flanders look like? The Somme? The French countryside that was to become No Man’s Land was not yet a muddied pit, and the arteries of defense were not yet dug into the soil of Europe. Not the ones he had wandered, at any rate.

Anna’s anger was shrinking. She’d already seemed warmer by breakfast this morning. He caught her giving him snatches of attention from her perch beside Bates - like she was thinking over if she would be cross much longer, or needed to look at him to rekindle whatever dying embers of her rage remained. He’d done his piece. He’d apologized - he didn’t know what more he could do to explain himself other than by the time he knew about O’Brien’s treachery, it was too late to do anything but store the information away for his own benefit. The only thing to do now was to wait. He ached for Phyllis’s confidential ear. His fingers itched to write letter after letter, all addressed to Richard.

Doctor Clarkson lurked amongst it all, an unwitting spectre of doom, at the fringes of the party. Thomas was trying to avoid him as long as possible - there was nothing he could do about something he’d already arranged before the shift. The most he could hope for was another one, to a different time, but that double-edged reprieve was looking less and less like a real possibility with every passing day. Thomas had his fair share of regret concerning different parts of the war, but ultimately he’d come out of it alive and mostly whole. He did not want to take that chance a second time, or face any of the impossible choices that had once been laid at his feet. 

He couldn’t be angry with himself. Instead, the dim fires of frustration began to fuel a sense of injustice. Last time, his predictions about how class would come into play once the conflict started came true. There would still be inept leaders and exemptions that Thomas and his social ilk were not afforded. That would not change.

Thomas had just offered a new drink to a fussy-looking Lady whose name he didn’t care to know when he was finally cornered.

“Oh, Thomas,” Dr. Clarkson was just as congenial as he remembered the man being. Thomas fought to look impassive. 

“I’ve done as I’ve promised. General Burton is commanding the Division at Richmond and I think I may have a place there for you. Under Colonel Cartwright.” Clarkson held out a crisp white envelope. Thomas didn’t take it. 

“These are the papers. When you’re ready, report to the local recruiting office and they’ll take it from there. As a matter of fact, I’m being drafted back in as a captain, so I’ll try to keep an eye on you.”

Thomas said, “That’s very kind of you, doctor,” just as he did the first time. But it was harder to come by any indication of appeasement now. 

Dr. Clarkson looked between Thomas and the envelope expectantly. Reluctantly, Thomas took it and tucked it away inside his tails. He hoped his lack of eagerness looked like solemnity and reverence, but it probably didn’t. Clarkson was a hard man to conceal truths from.

“There may be some advantage in your having volunteered so early,” the doctor continued.

There would be no advantage. If Thomas went to the recruiting office now or later, he would still eventually be asked to sign the Imperial Service Obligation. And then the army and its generals would send him wherever they thought he needed to be. The recruiting office would be overflowing with men all trying to join the Territorial Forces, some who would eventually tie up courts with appeals and conscientious objections. He was one man among millions, and his wants or wishes were meaningless when measured against the supposed good of the greater nation. 

But Thomas scraped up a small smile and said, “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waiting for the next chapter shouldn't be very long; it's mostly written! Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing :) Have a happy New Year.


	7. 1928

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 1928, another unwelcome discovery is made. There are many mysteries in need of solving.

_ Late October, 1928 _

Phyllis did not sleep all night. She huddled under the sheets in her nightgown instead, thinking about how cold and wet everything must have been once the sun set. She sighed in the silence of her room. Dim light was beginning to brighten the windows, diluting the inky sky into the first stages of indigo. It looked like it was going to be a bright morning. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and shivered when her feet touched the chilled wooden floor. There had been an old piece of carpet at the bedside when she started at Downton. The thing had been used, repurposed, and abused to the point it was barely recognizable as a human invention. So she’d thrown it out after a year or two, and had been waiting for a less-loved rug from the family to wear out so she might be able to divy it up and distribute the pieces amongst the staff that lived in the servant’s quarters. There was one in the luggage room she had her eye on.

Her reflection betrayed her lack of sleep. Her eyes were heavy, and bags of worry hung under them. She sighed again. Phyllis got dressed slowly. Carson was due to arrive today, and there were more search efforts set to happen. But as more time passed, the only answers her mind could produce for her questions were ones she didn’t want to hear. She fluffed her hair with her fingers.

Maybe he’d gone into town late at night. But that wasn’t like him. Maybe he’d gotten in over his head somewhere, made some miscalculations. Miscalculations were very like Thomas, but not where the stake of his life was concerned (usually). And if her suspicions about his romantic commitments were correct, she highly doubted he was out groping for trout in peculiar rivers. He was secretly a sentimental person, like herself, and in Phyllis’s experience was loyal to a fault. Thomas wouldn’t go looking for affection from strangers. Not when it was dangerous, and not when he was in love. 

But as she walked past the men’s side - sans-Thomas - and down to the servant’s hall, she found herself railing against imaginary foes. Shadowy, lurking figures who took advantage of vulnerable men because it was how they expressed their intolerance for something they didn’t want to understand. Her mouth thinned. Her half day was tomorrow. Phyllis was going to check every pub-side alley, every hospital, every patch of woods, every train station, and every country ditch from Downton to Ripon. The from Ripon to Thirsk. Joseph would go with her, too, if she asked him. Which she was planning to do when she went to his cottage for dinner that evening.

She switched the lights in the boot room, pulling down a pair of Lady Cora’s riding boots from the cupboard. Her ladyship didn’t often ride horses, but she was going out with his Lordship to probe the edges of the estate. For views or for clues, they probably weren’t sure which - either way, it would provide Phyllis with a valuable parcel of time she could use to devote to her own search efforts. She wished - so,  _ so _ desperately - that she wasn’t searching for a corpse. 

She couldn’t believe that. 

Phyllis would reserve true despair for confirmation that Thomas was not in London.

She felt the stiff toes of the riding boots. They could have used a few more days of preparation but she hadn’t been given much notice. So they would just have to do. She was deep in thought, and she didn’t notice the small hand reaching from under the worktable until it fastened itself in the folds of her skirt.

“Jesus, Mary, and -!” she quietly cursed with a violent start, then realizing, “Johnny?”

The little lad was bleary-eyed and shivering under the table. It was a stark contrast to his usual bright and curious disposition, and almost as alarming as finding him under the table with no one to claim him.

Phyllis knelt down on the hard floor, beckoning warmly, “Come on out. It’s alright. You just gave me a start is all.”

He came to her easily, quickly, burying his fingers and his face in her chest. She was surprised, but open to harboring him.

“Were you frightened?” she placated as she stood, and the child in her arms wordlessly nodded. Phyllis craned her neck around the corner. No lights shone except the ones she herself had turned on. Daisy and the other kitchen staff would soon be arriving. But it seemed far too early for Anna to make her ritual appearance.“Where’s your mum?”

“She’s gone,” Johnny’s reedy contribution curled around her ear. 

“She’s around here somewhere. We’ll find her.”

“No, we won’t. She’s gone,” the sure, somber nature of his delivery made her hair rise. 

“Come look with me,” Phyllis tried comforting him again, noting how cold Johnny was. Like he’d spent the night on the floor. His coat held the dust of the boot room, as if he’d slept in it. She gave his small shoulders some up and down rubs. Trying to get some warmth in them. This was not a child who had been wrapped and delivered to nanny in a blanket. This neglect was not like Anna at all. Nor Bates

“Anna?” she made a tour of the downstairs, getting more and more wary with every empty room. The butler’s pantry was locked. She jiggled the handle to be sure, but Mrs. Hughes was the one who would have the key. And unless Anna was a secret locksmith, she wouldn’t be inside. But given her husband’s surprising set of skills, Phyllis mused it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. She put her ear to the door. It was completely silent. Johnny nestled deeper into her shoulder, hiding his face.

“Not there,” he whispered.

...

When Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson arrived the kitchen staff had started stoking the fire in the oven. It was crepes for the upstairs breakfast today, and porridge with apples for the downstairs. Phyllis bounced Johnny on her knee every now and again, but gave up quickly because he was clearly not up for it. Now he slept in her arms, head lolling off to the side. Her lap was inarguably more comfortable than the floor.

“Don’t worry,” she’d told him when they first settled by the low heat radiating from some soggy embers of the fireplace. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.” 

“Don’t leave me, please,” he told her, wavering. 

“You’ll stay right here with me,” she smiled, but the outline of a fear was casting itself against the back of her mind. 

_ First, Thomas - now Anna, too?  _ But whatever that fear was, it was impossible to assign a name or a shape to it. It just lingered around her. An invisible sense of wrongness. It made her skin feel taught. Her scalp prickled.

She didn’t ask Daisy anything because she didn’t want to throw a wrench in their morning duties; yesterday’s disruption had proved a significant hurdle, and Phyllis wanted to be sure of  _ something  _ before the alarm was raised for the second morning in a row. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t being paranoid. 

“Good morning, Miss Baxter,” Mrs. Hughes also looked tired. She and Phyllis could be a matching set. Phyllis felt regret at the idea of adding to her concerns. Mr. Carson, by comparison, looked like a child at the fair. He wasn’t trying to revel to deeply in it given the circumstances, but the bounce in his step and the light in his eyes hinted at the pleasure of his reinstatement.

“Good morning!” Mr. Carson boomed at her, and tried the door to the pantry. Johnny slept soundly through the commotion.

“That’s locked,” Mrs. Hughes informed him.

“Whatever for?”

“Evidence, Charlie.”

“Can’t they take what they need and let me in?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Mrs. Hughes was rightfully edging towards snappish. Phyllis looked away, embarrassed to be a witness of the bald marital spat. They quickly fell into form when they remembered her presence, however. Mr. Carson reluctantly went to hang his coat in the hall. Once he was out of sight, Phyllis motioned the housekeeper to come closer.

“Helping Anna this morning?” she observed Johnny. “Why isn’t he in the nursery? Is one of the other children ill?”

“No,” Phyllis swallowed and lightly shook her head. “But Mrs. Hughes - I fear we might have a problem.”

...

“ _ Missing _ ?” Lady Mary was rumpled with sleep. Her hair snaked away from her head, decapitated Medusa-like tendrils. And her eyes were still heavy, but once she woke up fully she would have a stare worthy of a Gorgon sister. “Are you sure?”

The image of Baxter holding the scared little boy downstairs was present in her mind.

“We’re quite sure,” Elsie nodded. “Anna would never leave her son like that unless something was very wrong.”

“You’re right,” Lady Mary conceded. She tightened the belt of her silk robe. 

“I’m afraid something terrible is going on, milady.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Lady Mary straightened. “I’ll dress myself and wake the others. Call the police station in Ripon again, and...” she trailed off. 

Elsie followed her gaze until her own eyes landed on Florence, hovering at the end of the hallway. She was ready to flit away the moment someone looked at her askance, but was obviously there with some purpose. At the visual acknowledgment she began to come closer. Mrs. Hughes and one of the ladies of the house together would be a formidable front. It was slow progress. She floated, a pale and uncertain waif. Lady Mary looked perturbed, but who didn’t look perturbed this morning? Finally, after what felt like an age, Florence was within speaking range.

“Mrs. Hughes?” she was afraid to add Lady Mary to the address, lest she do it wrong. So Florence chose the equitable service-sin of pretending her ladyship wasn’t there.

“What is it, girl?” Elsie snapped, verbally brandishing her growing impatience. She’d been in a foul mood since the previous morning and nothing happened in the interim between then and now to help any part of it. Elsie hardly even minded Lady Mary was there to see the chastisement. Though she might later.

Florence, to her credit, gave an even delivery. “Well, it's only just Mr. Bates has just arrived downstairs from London. He’s asking where Mrs. Bates has gone to.”

“He's back already?”

_ Oh, lord. _

Florence nodded, “And no one truly knows what to tell him.”

“Bring him up here. We should inform him before we tell anyone else,” Lady Mary was rising to the formidable situation. “Before we ring the police.”

Elsie’s mouth went dry. A police presence at Downton Abbey never precipitated anything worth remembering fondly. And now they were coming for the second time in two days. Conceding to Anna’s absence meant acknowledging that Thomas’s own was more sinister than previously thought. Or hoped for. Elsie fought a rising sense of panic, keeping her outward demeanor unflapped. 

“I’ll fetch him, milady.”

...

Johnny was drawn into his father’s arms like a magnet to iron. Phyllis didn’t think he’d spent a moment _out _of arm since she’d found him. He didn’t nestle into Mr. Bates - he clung to him as a drowning man clings to the side of a boat.

“I know, son,” his words held hints of an emotional crack. “I know.”

Phyllis noticed Mr. Bates could just balance him on the hip supported by his good leg. It was apparent that soon, despite his young age, Johnny would outgrow his father's physical capabilities of support. She was reluctant to consider what implications that developing weakness would have on Mr. Bates's performance in his profession. But she assumed the Crawleys would be accommodating, for the sake of the Bates family.

“They told you then?” she promoted quietly. It was obvious they had. He'd been called upstairs so they could deliver the hard blow of bad news, and bade to go back downstairs so he could grieve in peace. She didn’t know how to navigate this situation other than being polite. It was all very numbing, the unexpectedness of it.

“Yes. Everything,” Mr. Bates pressed a light kiss to his son's forehead, which looked sweaty from the kind of hot sleep only children and sickly adults experienced. Johnny’d been a furnace in Phyllis’s lap only minutes prior. 

Daisy had put out a plate of biscuits and a pot of tea for them. This was her contribution to solace. By rights she probably could’ve taken a moment and sat with them. But she was burying her accumulated shock in her work.

“Polly, chop the watercress for the sandwiches. Her ladyship said they’d be needing light fare for today,” her instructions echoed through the servant’s hall. The lower ten skittered about, in and out, unsure and wide-eyed. They peered around corners like Thomas or Anna might reappear at any moment; their superstition served the dual purpose of helping them avoid Mr. Carson. However, Mr. Carson was currently upstairs with his lordship. So there wasn’t much visible danger to be had.

“I’m sorry,” Phyllis said, for what else was there to tell him?

“As am I,” Mr. Bates picked up a biscuit from the plate and offered it to Johnny. The boy took it loosely in his mouth and hand, but made no motion to chew. It sat still and uneaten in his lips. “We’ll find her soon.”

He looked at her, a little unsure, Phyllis thought. “We’ll find them both?”

“Yes,” Phyllis nodded, demure. “We will find them.”

“Lady Mary asked Mrs. Hughes to call the police.”

“I expect they’ll want to talk to us,” she wanted to laugh, but not in an amused way.

“Don’t they always?” Mr. Bates looked as worn as Johnny did when Phyllis found him in the boot room. He didn’t wear his fear as plainly, but Phyllis could recognize it because it resembled her own.

...

Phyllis was not enthusiastic about the idea of sitting down with a police sergeant twice in as many days. Yesterday had been galling enough, even if it was short. They'd spent much more time with Anna, considering. She could gather the same reluctance from Bate's expression - though, being out of the loop until now, he looked more thoroughly disoriented. It had taken almost a quarter of an hour to calm Johnny down enough to leave him in the care of Mrs. Hughes. His da would be right back, they told him over and over again.

“So,” Allen flipped through his notes from the day previous, eyebrows raised and forehead wrinkled. Phyllis held herself inconspicuously in every way and focused on the space above his nose. “Another one gone?”

“My wife, yes,” Bates frowned at the sergeant's flippant opening.

Allen just looked unimpressed. Bored, almost. “I see.” He took a small sip from the tea that had been offered him. While Phyllis gathered the same invitation had been silently extended to herself and Bates as well, neither of them partook. They sat in silent, unmoving tension. Waiting for the questions to come.

Allen put down his cup. "Mr. Bates, I gather you were convicted of murder in 1918? Served time for larceny before that?”

“Wrongly convicted for the former. As you can see I was released,” Bates ground out the answers through his teeth. 

“And Miss Baxter, you served time for larceny as well?”

“Yes,” she said, because he knew anyway, and she was used to admitting it.

“Is there a point to this?”

“I'm just trying to get a clear picture of the...social environment.”

Phyllis saw Bates bristle at that. 

"Yesterday Mrs. Bates told me she was the last one to see Mr. Barrow. Then she left, and he disappeared. To the best of your knowledge, do you know that to be the truth?"

“Yes. If she said so it is.” Questioning his wife’s word was not the path to Bates’s cooperation. “I was in London at the time, so if you’re asking for eyewitness testimony I’m afraid I won’t be able to provide it.”

Allen pressed his lips together. “I see. From my perspective, it's all very convenient.”

“Convenient?”

“A man and a woman, disappearing without a trace. One a day right after the other,” Allen took a breath. “It might be hard to face, but is there a chance there was something going on you didn’t know about?”

“What do you mean?” Bates was confused but Phyllis wasn’t. She stifled a cough.

“Were your wife and Mr. Barrow  _ involved _ in any way that-”

“They don’t get on that way,” Bates interrupted, just Phyllis said, “They’re cousins!”

Officer Allen looked doubtfully between the provided photographs of Anna and Thomas. "Cousins...who hate each other?"

Bates didn’t know what to do with her invention, and there was detectable flintiness in the look he gave her. Phyllis responded by taking the lead, albeit timidly. “They’re  _ like _ cousins. They don’t hate each other they just...don’t get on that way,” her echo of Bate’s assertion sounded weak to her ears.

“I see.”

“What we’re saying is there’s no way they’ve run off together. If that’s what you were thinking.”

Allen was not convinced. He made a half-hearted note.

...

Joseph was a surprisingly competent cook. He attributed the skill to his father, who he explained had always encouraged him to learn at least a little about what to do in a kitchen. Phyllis took a shine to Bill Molesley immediately when she learned that. But as simple and enjoyable as Joseph’s fare usually was, she felt more like pushing the stew around in her bowl than eating it. Her dining companion watched her in the glow of the fire, nervously assessing both the stew and her expression.

“It’s wonderful. Really,” Phyllis assured him. “I just have too much on my mind to be hungry.”

She’d taken Thomas’s letter with her, and felt it’s creased edges in her pocket. She’d debated back and forth about what to do with it, but wanted another person to weigh in. She knew Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes had no jurisdiction over Thomas anymore, but figured if she was going to share the contents with anyone it should be someone without seniority. Someone who would never have the opportunity to judge Thomas as a peer, but someone who was trustworthy.

“Have there been any hints at all?” Joseph was concerned of course, but his reaction was also invariably tied to her own feelings. There were still things about her relationship with Thomas he didn’t understand, and he plied her every now and then with a question or two about it.

He once asked her, “Have you really forgiven him entirely? Just like that?” 

“I’ve been granted so much grace I’d be rather a hypocrite if I didn’t,” had been her soft response. “And you haven’t known him as long as I have.”

“Phyllis?” Joseph’s gentle utterance brought her back to herself. At the table. Beside the fire. “Any news?”

She shook her head, “No sign of either of them. The house has been torn apart from top to bottom, but there’s nothing to suggest forced entry. No sign of struggle of any sort.” 

She sighed, “The police are maintaining this theory they’ve run off together to start an affair. And naturally there’s nothing we can actually  _ say _ to dispute that.”

“So they’re just” - he motioned dismissively with his hands - “doing nothing at all?”

“Everyone’s at a loss,” she slowly pushed her bowl away. “The whole thing is impossibly odd. It’s...unnatural. People don’t just disappear.”

Phyllis finally took out the letter. She kept it in her hands instead of putting it on the table, open for all to see. “I need your help with something.”

Joseph looked curious in his cautious way. “What is it?”

“A letter for Thomas. From someone I think he’s involved with. I took it from his tailcoat, before they would’ve searched it.”

If he was surprised he didn’t show it, but he did say, “That seems daring.”

“Not so daring. Just what was right to do,” she bit her lip. “But I need help responding. I’m not sure how. So that means I have to let you read it.”

Joseph didn’t seem hurt by her reluctance to share information, or to ask for help. It was not her own secrets she was trying to protect. His eyebrows were knit with concern. “I’ll help you.”

Still, she hesitated. “I know you understand how delicate this information is? How private?”

“Of course.”

“No one can know. Even if you think they already do, say nothing.”

Joseph nodded. Phyllis crinkled the paper slightly.

“I still feel badly.”

“You need help responding to this letter?” he took on some determined firmness.

“Yes,” she hemmed.

“But you feel showing it to anyone else would be a betrayal of some sort.”

“Correct,” she hawed.

“It's obvious you're only doing this because you have no other choice,” Joseph's hand slowly found its way on top of hers. She didn't move away, so it stayed there. Timid, but not unwelcome. “I think Mr. Barrow is practical enough a man to realize that.” 

...

_ Early November, 1928 _

Richard’s afternoon was free, so he was going to pay a visit to his barber. Riding the bus through the streets of Westminster was always an event; he liked to sit on the exposed top deck where he could easily observe the people on the street. Often-times what he saw on the journey were more interesting than the destination itself. All manner of foreign diplomats with their entourages, enjoying the historic scenery and elevated shopping. He was well-practiced in the skill of deferring the flirtatious glances of the women who sat nearby with a pleasant but disinterested smile. He enjoyed the crisp autumn air is it ruffled his hair that was only  _ just  _ beginning to look the tiniest bit too long. Brilliantine would only hide so much before one started resembling a living helmet. Being a servant in the Royal household meant maintaining Royal standards of appearance, even if he was the  _ second _ Royal Dresser.

He liked London well-enough to work there, but York was the place he was drawn to. A few of the various reasons for this attraction to Yorkshire were glaringly obvious, yet a great many of them were precious secrets. Like any home, the city was a facade that had separate rooms, each with their own hidden nooks and crannies. Different parts of himself. He knew where all the best bits were kept. 

Richard got off at his stop with little flourish. It was hard not to grin like an idiot when he knew there’d be a letter from Thomas waiting at the end of his errand. He looked forward to his half days not just because they were a welcome break, but because it made dropping by Sam's much, much easier. As he walked the last part of the way, anticipation for what awaited him began to take hold of his emotions. 

Sam wasn't just a barber - he was a good friend, a glaring homosexual, and complicit in enabling an illegal cross-county relationship between one butler and one second Royal dresser. “Sam” was a diminutive of his family name. He eschewed his Christian one because he “shared it with his father, who wouldn't know good taste if it bit him on the nose.” His father was also a Sunday school teacher, and Sam was an endless well of ironic biblical allusions as a result.

He told his clients, “No need to fear my scissors. I’m Sampson, not Delilah.” Conversely, when he was a single man one of his favorite pick-up lines used to be, “My name is Sampson, but I’m a regular Delilah. I’ll leave you weak in the knees.” He’d landed Lou with than one.

Richard smiled to himself as the little shop/apartment combo came into view. The shopfront jostled for real estate in comparison to the large faces of the Victorian-era business complexes that flanked either side, but the red-blue-and-white barber pole brought attention to Sam’s shop and the tailor next door.

_ Hope the tailor appreciates the business. _

The residents of London were probably equally appreciative that Sam did not exercise the traditional barber-practice of bloodletting. Richard made silent thanks for modern medicine.

“Afternoon,” Richard greeted warmly as he entered the otherwise-empty shop.

“Was wondering when you were going to show your face!” Sam peeked out from behind a curtain that divided the public space from that which was meant for living. Most shop owners would've used the alcove as storage, but Sam had turned it into an extension of his private and working life. Strangers sat in the chair in front of the window. Friends sat in the chair in the behind the curtain.

“Flip the placard, will you?”

Richard obliged, turning the card in the window from “OPEN” to “CLOSED”.

“It was slow business getting out of Buckingham, today. Had to dodge the ‘Page of the Backstairs’,” he imitated Wilson's self-important delivery as he explained his lateness. “Lawton, too. They both have their bones to pick, but I don't have the patience for either.”

Sam motioned him towards the back. “When in doubt, feign ignorance!”

_ Who, me? Sorry - thought you meant Mr. Miller. _ Richard internally mimed his future performance. Discounting who actually spent more time with the King and who spent more time on a train, two people occupying almost identical positions in a household was convenient. For Richard and for Miller. They both took their fair share of advantage.

“What did they want you to stay back for this time?” Sam bustled about his barber station, getting everything ready. Here there would be no exposure to wary glances from the street. It was a small space, but it was always endearingly private. Lou’s touch with the interior design was evidenced by the well-accessorized ready-to-assemble furniture. You’d hardly know most of it came from kits by the look of Lou’s upholstered benches.

“Packing up clothes to send to Sandringham House. You'd think there'd be enough to pick from there already, but Royals tend to be particular about their unmentionables,” Richard gave a small shrug, already relaxing in the space. “It won't take more than an hour - certainly not my whole half day. It doesn't even need to get sent till Thursday.”

“And Lawton?” She was a frequent complaint when Richard came by the shop.

“She's just trying to stir things up with us secondary staff. You know how it goes: ‘I heard Miss Dorrit say she  _ thought _ she heard Peter - the  _ footman _ ! - imply he could do a better job of cleaning the king's outerwear than  _ both _ his valets combined. What do you have to say to that?’”

“And what did you say?”

“I told her to kindly piss off, and she hasn't quite got over it.”

“Miller?”

“Oh, she won't get much traction there. Two reasons: first, he outranks her. Second, he thinks she's a shrew.”

Sam gave a yelp of laughter.

Richard looked around. “Where’s Lou?” When in Sam’s private enclave it was rare to see one half of the bodacious couple without the other. 

“Visiting his sister in Wales. She’s just had her first. Hasn’t seen her in years and they’re making it a big to-do. Should be back before Christmas, he says.”

Sam had an immaculate blond mustache; since he was a barber, it was the closest he could get to displaying his own wares. He smoothed it absently, which Richard took to be a sign of the dissonance between the tone of Sam’s words and his feelings. Lou’s sister was the type to accept her brother’s “London life” as long as she didn’t witness it’s evidence. 

“I’ve been looking forward to my free haircut,” he ribbed. Lightly. It was an attempt to lift Sam’s spirits, or at least distract them. Sam readily took the opportunity Richard presented to him, brightening.

“Yes, see, I give you these haircuts for ‘free’ -” Sam took Richard’s hat and coat, hanging them up “-because you bring me such excellent cast-offs.”

“These ‘excellent’ enough for you?” he pulled a pair of very long silk socks from his jacket pocket, holding them up for inspection.

“Oh! Richard,” Sam lay a hand against his own cheek in mock scandal. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Not my fanciest get, I’ll admit. But Miller had already collected what he considered his dues before I could. I’ll be faster next time. Or more sly, perhaps.”

“When the devil does his Majesty wear  _ those _ ?” Sam took the socks from him with pinched fingers.

“Balls and such.”

“They should be grounds for capital punishment,” but Sam accepted them all the same. 

“I thought maybe you could use them to make a cravat or summat. You’re handy, aren’t you?” Richard settled into the familiar chair.

Sam snapped out the apron two times. “Whatever I do, it’ll be a miracle worthy of Christ himself,” he paused, looking wistful. “No miracles needed for your hair, mind. It’s in excellent form.”

“Just a trim,” Richard reminded him.

“I know, I know. But does an artist not need to experiment?”

“I’ve talked to your experiments. They all wanted their money back.”

“Satisfaction is not an element inherent to Futurism!”

“Neither is hair.”

“Mind your manners,” Sam set to trimming. “Or I’ll send you walking out of here looking like a Giacomo Balla painting.”

Richard smirked. “Thomas might like that.”

“You  _ do _ say your man has a funny sense of humor,” Sam gave a teasingly threatening snip close to Richard’s ear. “Shall we test your theory?”

“Please don’t.”

“Maybe if I make you hideous enough, he’ll finally come down to London to give me an earful,” Sam started carefully shaping Richard’s side burns. Richard suppressed the urge to shake his head.

“I’ve told you - he’s very busy in Yorkshire.”

“Well, Lou and I think you made him up.”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Then who sends letters here for me, if not him?”

“You could be sending them yourself. It’s all a great scheme meant to make us stop asking about your love life. Stranger things have happened.”

“ _ Please _ .”

“He’s handsome, he’s got a good position in a prominent household,  _ and  _ he writes frequently?” Sam pursed his lips in jest. “He also lives too far away for us to drop in on a whim. Thomas Barrow sounds like the perfect fallacy, to me.”

“On the contrary, I think he’s the realest person I’ve ever known,” Richard raised his eyebrows and smiled.

Sam measured the length of his hair between two fingers and suddenly looked at him a mite more seriously. “Have you told him about the girls, then?”

“I’m going to,” Richard levelly met his friend’s piercing eyes.

“It’s been a year and then some.”

“I’m well aware, Sam.”

“Sometimes you play your cards a little too close to the vest.”

“After Lionel, who can blame me?”

“Thomas, I should think.”

There was a moment of tension-pressed silence.

“Sorry,” Sam apologized, brushing bits of hair from Richard’s neck. “You know him better than I do.”

Richard cleared his throat, “No, you’re right. I might have made a mess of things. But I’ll find out when I go to York next. I’ve said I want to meet to tell him something important - I’m expecting his reply today.”

Sam tutted, “You deserve someone who understands. I hope it goes well.” 

They finished the rest of the haircut in relative silence, until finally Sam gave Richard’s cheek a few light consolatory pats before undoing the apron around his neck. “All done! Up-up-up!”

Richard obliged, pawing at the prickly bits now lodged between his neck and his collar.

“Sorry ‘bout that. Can’t be helped,” Sam gave him back his hat and coat, as well as the letter Richard was so looking forward to opening. He took both in his hands. And frowned, turning the envelope over back-to-front.

“Is this all that’s come, Sam?”

“Well, it’s got your name on it...doesn’t it?” Sam peered, unsure. But  _ R. Ellis _ headed Sam’s address, no mistake.

“It’s not his handwriting,” he barely restrained the impulse to rip the letter from its sheath, electing instead to gently break the seal - to preserve it for later inspection. The script in the address was not Thomas’s loose cursive scrawl; it was compact and feminine-looking.

_ R. Ellis - _

_ I preface this letter with the acknowledgement of my own presumptions. If any part of what I say is incorrect, please do not take offense. Regardless, I will be so bold as to ask for a quick response - please forgive me. _

_ I'm writing to ask after our mutual friend, T. I'm one of the lady's maids at T's house of employment. You might remember me from your visit last autumn, though I regret we did not say much to one another. The day before this letters posting the household woke up to find him missing. His case was not packed, his clothes were left in their drawers, and he left a letter from you on his desk (I have the letter in my safe keeping; no one else has seen it). Since then the other lady's maid has gone missing as well. The police were summoned, but are choosing not to investigate. _

_ I have all manner of theories, but my most hoped for truth is that he's with you in London. That he is safe, and that he is happy. But I am worried, especially now another has unexpectedly disappeared. I find my hopes for an easy answer dimming, but until I receive positive or negative confirmation that you know where T is, I am investing my own efforts to locate him. I am going on a search in the surrounding area on my half-day; I will gladly keep you informed of my findings provided you choose to correspond. _

_ You might not have any reason to trust me other than I'm saying you can, which I realize is rather weak. But I hope T has told you enough about me that you can believe it. I bear you no ill-will. This is not a ruse. Please, tell me he's there. If he is, tell T I would like him to write so I know he is alright. _

_ Best, _

_ P.B.  _

Richard held the paper delicately, but the look on his face as he read and reread its contents must have cued Sam to his untended distress. 

“What’s wrong? Something amiss in the north?”

“Did you get that phone put in?”

“Yes, it’s still in the front, but-”

Richard glanced at the clock Sam kept on the shelf with grooming products. Half past two - if Thomas was going to have the opportunity to answer the phone outside of the occasions they scheduled, this would be the best time to try. There was a good chance Richard could catch him between moments of haste. He pushed past the other man, who trailed after him in an attempt to assist with the sudden and unspoken problem.

Everything was alright. He picked up the mouthpiece, the earpiece, and exchanged Downton’s downstairs number with the operator before she could finish asking for it. Sam hovered at his shoulder. Everything was alright. Three short rings that felt much longer than they actually were. Pick up pick up pick up - 

_ “You’ve reached Downton Abbey; this is Carson the butler speaking. How may I be of assistance?” _

Richard hung up. 

With surprising calmness, it seemed to himself. But then he was good in a pinch. Good under pressure. And now he had to ask himself - how much of that letter was true? And if all of it was, what had happened to Thomas?

“Richard - everything alright?”

“No. I need to write a letter. Where’s your paper?”

...

Everything Johnny knew was disrupted. Many would think there wasn’t much work to being almost-three-years-old, but that was because they couldn’t remember being almost-three-years-old. He didn’t understand everything, but he understood what was important. Mummy was gone, Da was sad. They stayed home all day, and he didn’t see nanny or Sybbie or Charlotte or George. He’d woken up in his cot instead of the nursery. He didn’t recognize anything in himself that was precocious, but the speed with which he’d realized the strange nature of his life now was a fair indication of emotional intelligence.

He stood on a chair by the window, feet planted squarely on the upholstered seat and hands grasping the wooden sill for balance. It was raining outside.

Earlier Da told him, “Johnny! Get down from there before you hurt yourself.”

Johnny looked at his father. It was logical and obvious to Johnny why he was standing on the chair, but Da needed an explanation. “I’m waiting.”

Da had paused, an unfamiliar expression on his face. The closest thing to it in Johnny’s memory was a dim impression of the Dowager Countess’s funeral. He hadn’t known her, and he hadn’t known what it was, but he’d intently watched the whole procession. He knew that Sybbie and George had liked her, and when she was gone it made them cry. Maybe Johnny was making that expression now, too.

“Waiting for mum?”

Johnny nodded, happy to be understood. Da put a large hand on the top of his head, steady and warm.

Then he said, “Be careful.”

So Johnny watched the outside path as Da made dinner noises in the kitchen behind him. Da could cook some things, but he always apologized about them.

“Not very much to offer from the army receipt book,” is what he told him, but all that meant to Johnny was he ate oatmeal or eggs at home instead of the nursery. Nanny gave them the same things. Only sometimes there was fruit, too. Like oranges with the peels all removed.

He was shrouded by the lace curtain - it tickled the back of his head, but he was too focused on  _ watching _ to bat it away. The sill was smooth under his hands, and the chill from the cloudy afternoon radiated through the glass panes.

A little white rabbit hopped into view. It’s nose twitched. It’s ear flicked. It’s red eyes looked at him. He’d never seen a rabbit with red eyes before, and the ones with pure white fur only existed to Johnny in picture books. Nanny read Sybbie and George  _ Alice in Wonderland _ \- it looked like the cover.

Of course, even at almost-three Johnny knew that rabbits did not wear coats or carry pocket watches. This rabbit wore no coat. Carried no pocket watch. But it’s eyes. The empty, thoughtless eyes of a rodent were not what sat in it’s head. There was Something about this animal. But before Johnny could determine what that Something was, the rabbit hopped away again.

Then a familiar figure began to take shape in the mist. The idea that this was a dream or his imagination was not something Johnny could conceptualize. If he was older, it might have. But it didn’t, because he was almost-three and everything he experienced was vivid and real.

“Mummy?” he whispered. A bubble of excitement rose inside him; he’d waited and she’d come back!

She drew closer. But she was different. Her dress was one he’d only seen at the back of the wardrobe. She looked sad. 

She drew closer. Johnny waited in anticipation for her to open the door and walk inside and hold him and then he and Da could stop frowning and - she drew closer. 

Too slow. 

She was in front of the window. 

On the other side.

“Mummy, I waited” he said it a little louder. Maybe she couldn’t hear him through the glass? She would be so happy he was good and polite. 

She was right  _ there _ . 

If this was a game, he didn’t like it.

She put her hand over her eyes, like she did when she was looking at the sun. But if she was right _ there, _ why couldn’t she see him? He waved. 

She was in the rain, but she wasn’t wet. She drew closer. 

She drew so close she was leaning against the glass. One hand resting fully on the pane, the edge of the other forming a bridge between the brim of her hat and the window.

She looked right through him.

“Mummy!” he was screaming it now even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to scream inside. “MUMMY, I’M HERE!”

His fists beat against the glass.

He hardly registered Da’s heavy, uneven footsteps as he rushed to him, pulling the curtain aside. 

She was gone. 

Johnny wailed.

...

Elsie usually enjoyed the quiet of her sitting room. It was a round-about way to say “office”, but she supposed the world thought that was too masculine a word for such a feminine space. But whereas the room was traditionally a refuge from the clatter and small-scale drama that had traditionally filled the servant’s hall, the quiet today was eerie. Because there was very little noise to escape from. The organized search efforts had petered out; without the support of the police, and without any clue overturned, progress had come to a standstill. The servant's hall grew tranquil, but hollow.

She knew Charlie worked only one wall away from her, but it was the reason he was sitting there and not in their cottage which disturbed her. Why Miss Baxter was struggling to split the difference between Lady Mary and Lady Cora, despite the former’s protestations. Why Mr. Bates and Johnny were sequestered at home on Lord Gramtham’s request. She imagined that his lordship made the order out of sympathy, but knew that being banned from work would torture Mr. Bates to near-insanity. He needed something to take his mind off the mystery they all found themselves grinding against, especially given his proximity to it. Little Johnny would probably benefit from routine, too. He should be with his nursery-mates, playing and being distracted.

She had half a mind to drop by the Bates cottage with some dinner on her way back. It would give her an excuse to leave early, and escape the tension which was beginning to undercut the solemn air at the Abbey.  The hallboys and the maids were slightly resistant to Charlie - afraid of him, even. The maids were easier to handle because they were under her charge more fully, but the lower ten still had the advantage of being allies. A young and united front. She’d overheard a conversation between Ada and Florence as they cleaned that morning:

“Wait! Don’t leave me by myself.” The patter of quick feet across carpet.

“Then hurry up! ...You’re not going to disappear, you know.”

“It’s not that...”

“You ever think about how many people die in a place like this? Loads. Probably.”

“_Shh_! They’re not dead! That’s a  _ terrible  _ thing to say, Ada.”

“Did I _ say _ they were? I think the police are right. They ran off together. Two lovebirds.”

“I don’t think that, and neither does Albert. It’s not like them.”

“‘Course if  _ I _ were Mrs. Bates, and  _ I  _ had a choice between Mr. Bates and Mr. Barrow it’d be no question.”

“ _ Ada!” _

“Just an observation, mind. I’m no tart but I do have eyes. Me mum likes to say if she had one bob for every girl or fella she knew was on a ‘left-handed honeymoon’ she could ask the people in the big house to pay rent.”

“It’s just...,” an audible sigh. “I want them back. Mr. Carson is hard to please.”

“Impossible, you mean? He told Reggie if he took any longer to get coal from the shed, he might as well go get Dr. Clarkson from the village to treat us all for hypothermia. It didn’t take him more than ten minutes! Mr. Barrow had high standards but he didn’t run you ragged if you didn’t meet them.” Muffled giggles.

Elsie didn’t have the energy to pursue corrective action at the time. And she would lose her advantage - the housemaids didn’t know she listened on the edges of their conversations, and they didn’t know how far their voices carried, even in whisper. Elsie begrudgingly considered eavesdropping part of her job description. She did however, have quiet pride that she wasn’t a housekeeper who hid coins in places the maids would find. Elsie had always considered that moral test rather underhanded. How could you punish someone caught in a snare you’d made for them, especially considering the circumstances many of these girls came from? Someone else might liken it to “hunting the dishonest”. Elsie didn’t. Thinking on her years as a young maid, she wasn’t sure she could’ve passed the test herself. She was always loathe to hold others to standards she knew she wouldn’t have met.

She wasn’t second-guessing herself now, as she checked the seams of the linens that weren’t currently spread on the beds upstairs. Instead Elsie was thinking of some subtler way she could keep the girls from gossiping. It was only a matter of time before they said the wrong thing to the wrong person, and feelings got hurt. Grudges nursed. In her experience young minds had scarcely thought of the consequence of the words that flitted through their heads before they were flying off their tongues. 

And sometimes, those young minds grew up and became butlers.

Thomas and Anna’s employment files with copies of the references they first arrived with were still on the corner of her table. The picture from Thomas’s had been taken by the police for reference - Mr. Bates had supplied them with a family portrait on Anna’s behalf. The pictures were taken for this express purpose (but usually with the notion that if a servant stole something and ran with it, the police would have some visual key to track them down). Anna’s picture was printed and pasted on stiff cardboard. A little fuzzy around the edges of her face. She was wearing the outfit she’d come to interview in. She’d been instructed not to smile by the photographer but the satisfaction of landing her position was easy to read in her eyes. They’d both been sent straight from the butler’s pantry to a portrait studio - the Crawleys had footed the bill. Elsie still needed to return the files to the butler’s pantry, but liked having them nearby for some unplaceable reason. Perhaps it felt like doing something, when she knew the police weren’t bothering themselves with any piece of it.

Elsie felt a surge of peculiar loneliness that the only singleton photo which existed of Thomas at Downton was the one they’d taken in the eventuality of a crime. Otherwise he could be spotted in the background of various all-staff portraits taken in front of the Abbey, but he hovered on the edges where the photoplate’s ability to capture true dimensions fell flat. None of them did him justice, truly. They hadn’t gotten around to taking an updated portrait, all together. And she found herself worrying that the police wouldn’t be able to recognize him even with the photo from his file. He looked so young in it.

_ Calm down. He hasn’t changed that much. _

She could hear Charlie rattling around next door, but it wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t his place of dominion anymore. His tread didn’t quite fit into the grooves anymore. Offense was easy to make and Charlie treated the current staff like they were all still his creatures - even the absent Thomas.

“Can you believe it?” he’d said, trying but failing to sound uncritical. “He never even covered the thing! I know the benefit gala is only a month away, but think of what damage could happen in the meantime?”

He’d put a sheet over top the triptych and put away the clock pieces with shaking hands as soon as the police reopened the pantry. But he didn’t know how the “blasted thing” fit back together, so it sat redolent and abandoned on a side table. The old was coming back to thwart the tide of the new. But she suspected if he tried to do anything about the radio in the servant’s hall there would be a silent revolt. She’d have to advise him suitably.

Elsie closed her eyes and let her hands fall into the folds of the sheet she was turning over in her lap. It was all such a mess. It was hard to get through the day, knowing what she knew about Thomas and Anna respectively. It had been so many years and so much trouble. She’d spent more days with them than their parents had, by this time, and since that realization Elsie had secreted the maternal shine she’d taken to them inside her heart. If Daisy was Mrs. Patmore’s, then Thomas and Anna were hers. However aggravating that sentiment might be at times.

And now the only thing to do was wait. When two people were swallowed into the ether, what was there to do? No one who was in the know could take solace in the idea that the pair had run off in a lover’s tryst - it would have been a hilarious insinuation in any other scenario. The house had been turned over looking for any sign of them. She’d personally entertained the nightmare of a madman hidden in the attic - at least that was something she could explain - but the search revealed nothing. 

Mrs. Patmore didn’t spend much of her time in the Downton kitchens anymore, but after her visit the day previous Elsie noticed she’d left a saucer of cream on a windowsill. The idea that that Thomas and Anna were captives of the fair folk also would have been hilarious in any other scenario. When the plain facts were hard to come by it was easy to fall back on superstition. Elsie hadn’t cleaned it up yet.

She blinked her eyes open, and found that sleep was pulling at them ever-so-slightly. Despite the time, which was early afternoon, she was tired. The rain pattering down outside and the fire in the hearth didn’t help matters. The light coming into her sitting room was grey and faint and almost seemed to hold a shape where it failed to reach the dim corners. 

In this half-awake, half-asleep haze that something began to happen.

There was someone standing by the door. The door did not open, nor did it close, but there was one more person in the room nonetheless. Elsie straightened, blinking some more. But instead of banishing the waking dream, it strengthened it. The form sharpened - for that was the only way to describe it. It slowly congealed, from a mist into a form - a familiar form. 

Thomas Barrow.

_ Surely, I’m dreaming _ . 

It was ethereal. Elsie sat still, as one does when recovering from the terror of a nightmare. Watching the shadows to see if the monsters had crossed into the waking world. She was seeing him, but she could see  _ through  _ him as well. The painting hung on her wall showed the seaside - a ghostly impression of Thomas’s face floated before it, lace damask.

He was young - young like the photo she’d given the police. And he  _ talked _ . An invisible, silent conversation with someone she couldn’t see, his cap held tightly in his hands. He was smiling but unease was alive underneath it. She couldn’t recall him ever looking so unguarded at that age, a recollection that cemented the idea this was a delusion. An errant clip from a silent picture, but in semi-present color, and playing in her sitting room.

She passed her hand over her eyes, thinking to wipe away the apparition.

But he was still there.

Still speaking words she couldn’t hear, still smiling. Looking right through her. As present as he seemed to her, it was clear that whatever stood by the door could not see Elsie.

“Thomas?” she tried, feeling ten shades both odd and foolish.

As soon as she said it - he vanished. The experience left no souvenir - no cold draft, no noise, no footprints on the rug. Nothing like in the stories from her childhood, whispered under sheets and by candlelight. Elsie tried one more experimental pass over her eyes. But no matter how hard she stared at the corner he didn’t come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Richard Ellis. Man of the hour. And it's not what you think it is, I promise.


	8. 1914

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas and Anna need to solve some time sensitive problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: War-typical violence, implied/lightly referenced child abuse.

_ Early August, 1912 _

There was a light summer rain the morning Gwen left, only a few days after the garden party. The damp steamed from the hot ground - it was a welcome break from the long heat that preceded the drizzle. It had stormed fiercely all the night before - they’d kept the window open to harness the breeze. In the distance, Anna could see the gardeners picking up twigs and loose branches from the lawn. 

Gwen departed from the servant’s entrance accompanied by an entourage of well-wishers. Mrs. Hughes, John, Anna, Lily, William, and Lady Sybil had been the loyal turn-out. They’d caught Thomas in the middle of a smoke break, and he said something quick about safe travels to Gwen before retreating into the servant’s hall. There was still some cool distance between Anna and Thomas, but it was in it’s vestigial stages. Branson was sitting in the car, luggage already loaded in the back. 

Gwen was ecstatic when she saw she was going to the station by motor, not by foot. Anna suspected it was because she’d only ridden in one a handful of times. It was a triumphant exit fit for a triumphant occasion. Lady Sybil smiled smartly - it had been her idea and she was visibly proud of it.

“I do feel terrible about the short notice,” Gwen apologized mostly to Anna and Lily, who would suffer the most from her absence.

“Don’t feel too badly,” Anna assured her. “We can manage - this job is the chance of a lifetime for you.”

Gwen was beaming - despite Branson’s offer, she insisted on carrying her typewriter herself.

“I know coming back would defeat the purpose of going, Gwen,” Mrs. Hughes said. “But know this - there will always be a place for you here.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hughes,” Gwen was too happy to be bashful. “I appreciate that.”

“Be sure to write once you’re settled,” Anna implored, knowing full-well that Gwen would write mostly to Lady Sybil.

“I will!”

“And take care,” John added. “Don’t do anything untrue to yourself.”

“Not planning on it - I’ve been wanting to do this for ages!”

William followed up with his own enthusiasm, “Next time you see me, I expect I’ll have a medal or two!”

“Enough of that,” Mrs. Hughes lightly chided. “You’re not going anywhere grand just yet.”

“Besides,” Lady Sybil cut in, and everyone paused to defer to her contribution. “They all think it’s going to be over before Christmas. That’s what I’ve read, at least.”

They all nodded thoughtfully at that, William more glumly than the rest. Such naivete. Anna caught Branson looking at the young Lady with what could only be described as fascination. 

“Whatever the case, do try and stay out of trouble,” Gwen told William directly.

“That goes double for you,” Anna countered.

“I’ll be alright,” Gwen shifted from foot to foot, leaning back, the weight of her typewriter starting to grow unmanageable.

“We better be off,” Branson jerked his head in the direction of the station.

“Right. Goodbye, everyone!”

“I’ll come with you - I don’t want to say goodbye just yet,” Lady Sybil and Gwen piled into the back of the car. A funny sight. A Lady and a former maid sitting side by side - but for their hats, from the back, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They watched the car drive away before turning to go back inside.

“Another one gone,” Mrs. Hughes sighed. “I’ll need to take a trip to the school in the village - see who’s on offer.”

“You’ll have the pick of the class, I expect. Wouldn’t they all like a job here?” John held the door open for everyone as they filed through.

Mrs. Hughes nodded, “Usually.”

The girls who were hired locally before the war usually came right from the school - the housekeepers of all nearby country houses asked the headmaster about his healthiest, hardest working students and went from there. Anna knew, though, that they would cycle through a number of girls who left after short stretches for various reasons. Homesickness factored largely, of course, but the growing strain of the war was chiefest among them. As brothers and farmhands answered the call of the army, the girls answered the call of home to help till and harvest. To shepherd all the animals they’d spent their childhoods learning how to manage. There were also those who exchanged their mobcaps for the frizzy halos and jaundiced tinge of the munitionettes - they could earn more than both their parents put together.

Anna smiled to herself.

In spite of all the changes, nothing about Gwen’s goodbye had been different. She was glad some of the past was staying the same.

...

“Something on your mind, Daisy?” Thomas settled gratefully into a seat by the unlit fireplace. He hadn’t forgotten the rigor of being a footman - but he had grown accustomed to the lightened load of being a butler. Less heavy lifting. And though  _ \-  _ by his own reasoning - nothing should’ve been different about how “used” he was to footman-work, Thomas found himself sore and tired more often than he’d like. At least he could worry less about straining his back; if he could avoid the front, he figured he could manage to get another good thirty years out of it.

Daisy had been granted a rare moment of stillness. A precious commodity in the day of a scullery maid. She was leafing halfheartedly through a magazine that advertised the drama of the budding cinema industry. The illustrated starlet on the cover might have been one who starred in an American picture with Rudolph Valentino in the early twenties - she didn’t look much older than Daisy. He could easily be wrong. Thomas didn’t have an eye for appreciating or mind for remembering leading ladies. And he hadn’t spent much of his time at the pictures actually  _ watching _ them, as such. There were better things to do in dark, anonymous rooms. He shook out a Woodbine and lit up.

“Better put that away before Carson finds it.” 

The butler resisted the steady infiltration of popular culture. He saw the pictures as a bastardous offshoot of music halls, of which he held no high opinion. Maids’ magazines left lying about were likely to find themselves in the bin. At least for a while. Carson had unknowingly discarded one that belonged to O’Brien once, and the resulting ordeal had marked the end of his silent crusade. Thomas couldn’t help but wonder, idly, where the woman was. He hoped it was somewhere with a roof and a bed, at least. He wasn't sure how much more he wanted to hope for her.

Daisy paused her perusal. “I were only thinking about things...,” she closed the magazine and trailed off, obviously unsure he’d want to hear what those “things” were. Thomas had patience for her. Though he did wish she’d hurry up and unleash the firebrand he knew was hiding inside her. Perhaps she needed a little stoking.

“Things?”

She had that hesitant air about her again. Was she really as timid as everyone made her out to be, or was she just incredibly thoughtful? Thomas waited. And waited some more.

_ Perhaps a bit of both _ .

Daisy began slowly, “Mrs. Patmore told me you weren't right for me, and that I weren't right for you.”

_ This again? _

“Yes,” Thomas rushed to say. “Still the way of it, too.”

She wasn’t offended, which Thomas took to mean he hadn’t thwarted a pass. His nerves settled a notch. She looked like a confused Labrador, eyes wide and watery, frowning slightly. 

“But...I'm not sure I'm right for William, neither. Am I?”

That was surprisingly self-aware. Daisy was already tuned to the direction social currents were running. War meant imminent death. Imminent death meant rash decisions. One popular rash decision amongst young men was marriage, usually to pretty girls within easy reach. On some level, Daisy clearly realized she was both.

“You're the only one who can suss that out,” he lowered his volume to match hers, casting a conspiratorial glance at all the empty doorways. 

_ Not Mrs. Patmore. Certainly not William.  _ Neither one could be called a neutral party.

She considered this. “Suppose you're right.”

Thomas decided, in that moment, a little flex of his knowledge of the future wouldn’t do much harm.

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret later,” he instructed her. “And don't be afraid to hold your ground.”

“Against what?”

“Nevermind,” he realized he’d let his cigarette burn almost halfway to nothing. “Just...remember you can tell them no.”

“Tell them no?” Daisy’s eyes followed him as he stood. “Whose ‘ _ them _ ’?”

And the insanity of it was Thomas almost considered telling her. He could bring her closer with the secret (but then, it was such a strange secret, it was just as likely to push her away). What would her future look like if she knew it?

Then Bates limped into the servant’s hall, fists full of old collars, looking curious about what he’d overheard of the conversation. 

The moment had passed. 

“Goodbye, Daisy!” It was an inelegant way to end the encounter, but it was the best he could come up with. He made a swift exit.

"Thomas, wait!” she called. “What did you mean...?”

“Don’t let Thomas bother you, Daisy,” Bates was throwing his voice after Thomas, making sure he could hear.

_ Fuck off _ .

It was a miracle that man had someone like Anna. Because if Thomas were a woman - and one whose romantic taste happened to be such that he found Bates attractive - he felt he could understand the late Vera’s penchant for extortion and rat poison. A little, at least.

“He was no bother, really,” Daisy’s reply was faint, but it made Thomas smile. It even gave him a little confidence.

...

Anna let Thomas catch up to her after she changed the girls for the afternoon. He was cutting across the gallery floor, but slowed down when he noticed he was inadvertently following her. She stopped, letting him make a cautious approach.

“How’s Lady Mary?” he asked, even though he knew. Anna sensed this was a test.

“In a right state,” she obliged him with an answer. “As one would expect.”

It would be a while yet before Lady Mary acclimated to the idea of her future without Mr. Crawley in it. As it was she’d spent most of her days since the garden party crying in private and pretending to read books. Going on long and lonely walks. Edith was the same, but for the love of Sir Anthony Strallen. And because they were both the cause of the other’s grief, the two girls maintained parallel lives under the same house. The only time they crossed another was to dress and eat. Poor Lady Grantham was still too fraught with her own troubles sort them, and Lady Sybil, putting it bluntly, was too smitten. Anna doubted his lordship had given much notice, other than his daughters were hurling veiled insults at each other less frequently. His mother took up this 

It would only be a few more weeks until news of Matthew’s enlistment would come from Mrs. Crawley, plunging the household into an even deeper level of despair. Although he was far from deployment and even farther from dead, it was still an overwhelming amount of prospects to lose at one time. An unborn heir, two marriage prospects, the comfort of peace - the list wore on.

She looked around. They were alone. Anna suspected she knew the reason Thomas struck up a conversation. She evaluated the way he held himself with a degree of deference.

“Am I forgiven?”

“Almost. There’s not much left to reconcile with.” She had her own history and own reason for doing things. She had to be true to herself, true to the good people she knew and the love she believed the world could hold. She knew the right measures. She was slowly coming to terms that Thomas might figure his measures differently.

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said, just as earnestly as he had the first time.

“I know. But we have to make them when we can - choices, I mean.”

“To change things?” he was still skeptical, shoulder leaning lightly against the pillar. Ready to glide away again at a moment’s notice.

“Now that we know we’re here for a while, we have to try.”

“I don’t know how much we’ll manage.”

“It’s not like what you told me before. You’ve done a fair bit.” She didn’t know why he was still so fatalistic when he managed to get O’Brien chucked almost a decade ahead of schedule.

“Yes,” he sighed. “And I’ll be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life for it. Worth it now - but later?”

“Time will out,” she crossed her arms.

“How much longer should I give you?” He was keeping a flat affect, but she noticed an anxious flex of his fingers every now and then.

“I’ll let you know.” 

Just honesty, nothing cruel or cold behind it. It’d do no good to cross bridges before they were fully mended - that was the truth. And then she walked away first, to remind both Thomas and herself she was the one who had final say.

...

All things considered, Thomas spent the afternoon in a sense of moderate peace. Anna would rekindle their friendship when she was ready - it was so reassuring he was embarrassed by himself. While he was quickly rebuilding good credit with Daisy - and the tolerance others afforded him was markedly increasing in the wake of O’Brien’s exit - there wasn’t anyone else who  _ knew _ that he could talk to. Thomas was aware he wasn't a forthright person. But there was something to be said about the reassuring effects of keeping mutual confidence. 

He also spent the rest of the day remembering the promise he’d made Daisy before the garden party. To apologize to William. And, if he was being honest with himself, Thomas had been putting it off. But if Daisy could pluck up the mettle to speak on his behalf to Bates, he could do the same and start the process of reparations. He promised himself he would make amends as soon as he had a moment alone with William - unfortunately that moment happened before bed, a brief pass in the corridor of the servant’s quarters.

“William,” Thomas began, and the tired-eyed William skidded to a suspicious stop. Thomas had best trot it out quick as he could. He hated agonizing over these things, mostly because it betrayed his lack of experience with apologies - both the giving and receiving of. There was a certain level of unresolved conflict a person got used to navigating when they worked in service as long as he had. 

“I've treated you unkindly,” he let it linger there, the rehearsed sentiment feeling very weak and thin all of a sudden. It was too awkward and too unexpected.

William's expression seemed caught between two camps - “ _ What the fucking hell is happening? _ ,” and, “ _ You surely did, you malevolent bastard _ .” Thomas wondered if William knew what “malevolent” meant, and if it was therefore fitting to incorporate in what Thomas imagined the other footman's internal dialogue to be. He banished the thought. He'd keep that one to himself. He needed to maintain a sociable mind. 

Thomas waited.

“...And?” William decided on a reaction, and the decision he made was “unimpressed”.

_ And? AND!? _

And yet, Thomas reluctantly admired William's obstinance. He had more backbone than Thomas remembered. Even if what sat on top of that backbone was a bit light where it truly counted.

Now William waited. But Thomas refused to squirm. Clearly what he’d given was judged insufficient.

“I'm sorry,” he eventually added, deep and solemn and with all the necessary eye contact. He knew he looked very genuine when he said it, because he actually was. The recollection of William on his deathbed - surrounded by fragrant flowers and a reluctant bride - made it quite easy. Thomas was sorry for a lot of things where William was concerned.

William considered his apology for a long moment. Then he said flatly, “That's all well and good, but I'll believe it once you start acting like it.”

_ Oh, clever.  _ Thomas had made life easier for the other footman concerning the silver for the garden party. However, William was still expecting the sweet taste of bait on a bitter hook. He was not expecting faultless generosity. It might not have been through the kindest of means, but Thomas had taught William skepticism.

“You will,” Thomas insisted.

“...Alright.”

“Good!”

“Fine...”

They were fighting over the last word like two siblings over space in a shared bed. Thomas settled for lingering awkwardly in the doorway before nodding once - with purpose! - and gliding away. For an only child, William knew how to hold his own in an argument surprisingly well. He'd sniffed out his possession of the high ground and wasn't about to give it up. Even if he only had it because Thomas gave it to him. Thomas hated to lose, generally speaking - but he could permit this.

...

_ It was the first household she ever worked in - a local rector and his wife. They had two children, young daughters with golden hair and bright blue eyes. Helena and Ruth. Anna was the tweeny. She helped the lone housemaid answer the door for visitors, served dinner to the family, cleaned, assisted the cook with washing up, and sometimes when nanny was ill she tucked the girls into bed. It was all-purpose work, and it was demanding, but she threw herself into it day after day because hard work was a balm for the regrets that still feasted on her heart. Apart from Anna, the cook, the housemaid, and the nanny, there was no one else. _

_ Nanny was an older woman, and would take liberties with Anna’s inexperience. _

_ “Good morning, love,” one day she smiled at Anna with a favor in mind. “Could you do something for me?” _

_ And Anna, young and unsure, said, “Yes.” _

_ So it became a routine that Helena and Ruth would play in gravel drive as Anna scrubbed the stoop with a donkey stone, one eye on the whiteness of the front steps and the other on the sisters. Nanny was inside, getting some time for herself by adding her workload to Anna’s. _

_ The donkey stone was gritty and hard on her hands - after this, she would need to blacken the grates of the fireplaces. Her knuckles were often rubbed raw by the time the chore was done, and the solvents Anna used later would sting inside the open scrapes. _

_ “You can’t catch me!” Helena, the older daughter, screeched. She liked to run and be free, even though Anna could tell her mother didn’t like it. “You’ll never catch me!” _

_ Ruth stumbled after her, scuffing the toes of her leather boots. There were tiny heels on them; their mother was trying to plant the seeds of lady-like posture. Ruth was not as good at it as Helena was. _

_ “Stop running from me!” Ruth cried. “It’s not fair!” _

_ “You’re so bad at this, Ruthie,” Helena twirled to showcase her skill - she had already been wearing her own heels for two years. She twirled elegantly, courtesy of her dance and etiquette lessons, Anna gathered. Ruth was solidly at a disadvantage there. _

_ Ruth made a lurching grab for her sister - “Stop making fun, Nel!” - and wound up with her hands and knees buried in the gravel. There was a shocked moment between the young girl’s realization of her pain and her cries. Helena was immediately repentant, sisterly concern replacing the enjoyment she gleaned from torment  _

_ “Ruth!” she went to her sister, and Anna silently watched, stopped scrubbing the stoop. She wasn’t sure what to do. So she waited. _

_ “Are you alright?” Helena asked. _

_ “No!” Ruth sobbed in a very true way. She wasn’t looking for sympathy. She was simply expressing herself the only way she knew how. “You always leave me behind - always!” _

_ “It’s not that bad,” her sister took stock of her injuries, unperturbed by the sight of blood seeping from Ruth’s pockmarked skin. She was headstrong and not frightened by much. “I promise I won’t leave you anymore. Please, don’t be sad any longer.” _

_ And suddenly, through time and distance, Anna heard Eliza’s voice. _

** _“Please don’t go,” Eliza held onto Anna’s wrist, her eyes wide and watery. “Don’t leave me alone here._ ** _ ”  _

_ Anna began scrubbing the stoop again - very quickly and very roughly. The tips of her fingers felt scraped away already, but maybe if she scrubbed hard enough, echoes of things done and gone would stop ringing through her mind. Muffle them. And then she would wipe away the residue left behind. She would clean herself of them.  _

_ The girls’ mother wandered outside, drawn by the commotion. _

_ “Girls!” she was a sharp woman, trying to press her children into the mold she herself had conformed to. “What is going on out here? Stop crying out like screaming fools - your father can hardly think.”  _

_ Helena and Ruth broke apart, one shameful and the other still sniffling. _

_ Then she looked the work Anna had done. “Oh, Anna - this looks very nice. Very clean.” _

...

Enlistment presented Thomas with his second problem. He'd managed to cling to the Crawley's goodwill, but the army had much less forgiveness to spare. He couldn't walk into a recruitment office and say, “Thanks for the offer, lads, but I've decided fighting isn't for me after all. Say ‘Hello’ to the Kaiser for me!” Which meant he needed to make sure the army wouldn't want to take him. Luckily, he had the beginning stages of a plan in place.

On Sunday morning the servants of Downton Abbey took the wagon to church in the village, lurching and bumping about inelegantly. The Crawleys could start the journey later, being driven in the motorcar. They’d been dressed and polished to a shine, ready to seat themselves in their allocated pew for all the village to see. A model of God-loving, God-fearing gentry dressed in their Sunday best. And attendance this Sunday was especially important, because they’d missed last week’s on account of Lady Cora’s recovery.

Thomas himself had looked sadly at the contents of his wardrobe after serving breakfast, having to make a hasty change in order to be on-time for departure. The suits he’d saved for and the cast-offs he’d received from Lord Grantham as a valet had been taken, because they did not yet exist or belong to him (most of what he wore was his own, anyway - he didn’t want to look like a fifty-something lord with fifty-something fashion). The showpiece of his off-duty wardrobe now was his black brushed woolen suit, a purchase he’d gotten at a discount and off-the-peg from a middleing department store in York. 

It had only needed some slight repair about the right shoulder seam and two buttons replaced on the cuff. And if the clerk had been suspicious about the neatness of the tear or the vanished buttons, he hadn’t said anything. He was too busy dropping hair-pins to notice the pinched and slightly-anxious way Thomas made his case for a cheaper price.

“It’s only fair,” the young man had said. “Say - what have you got planned for the afternoon? Have a sweetheart you’re courting ‘round the pansies in the park? You’ll look very fine in this, for that.”

But Thomas was too preoccupied with holding the buttons loosely in his non-dominant hand to return the dropped pin. He was inexperienced with both thievery and innuendo. At that time, at least.

“No. I’m looking for work,” he replied awkwardly. Then the wind went out of their conversation. Thomas paid the reduced price. And he went about the rest of his day feeling he’d missed an opportunity he didn’t know how to verbalize. Instead of meeting up in the park with a like-minded young man, he spent his afternoon remedying the manufactured defects with his rudimentary tailoring skills. And he took pains to make sure the jacket, pants, and waistcoat were tweaked for proper fit. He was proud of the skills he’d managed to glean between his duties as a hallboy.

As much a triumph the suit had seemed at the time, now it just looked worn. Despite the care Thomas had always moved with, the abuse of events it bore witness to (fairs in the country, weekly trips to church in the wagon, his half-day excursions during the London season) had made a visible toll. And - he was dismayed to remember as he dressed - he had just managed to out-grow it. He’d bought the suit before coming to work at Downton; in fact, he’d worn it for his interview. But he’d fleshed out slightly more since then, leaving the last of any awkward teenage malformation behind him. The sleeves rode up a little on his forearms as a result, and the pant-cuffs barely broke themselves against the tops of his shoes. There was nothing left to let out. At least the waistcoat was alright.

_ ...For now. _

He also had a select few white shirts in cotton drill with detachable collars, one extra pair of trousers with a bad fit, one cap made from recycled clothing, striped braces, and a couple of second-hand henleys. But wearing those instead would be tantamount to going down in his pyjamas. And even if he could overcome his personal reservations about appearing in such a way, Carson would haul him back up to the servant’s quarters and stuff Thomas in a suit himself. So he went to church, looking shabbier than he wanted to, but not as shabby as he could be.

He managed to kneel in the pew space next to Anna, who was still trying to maintain what would appear to be a naturalistic development of familiarity with him for Bates’s sake. She’d peppered in a few light conversations at meals this past week, but the official “You’re forgiven” had yet to happen. She’d have to thaw the rest of her discontent quickly if Thomas’s plan was going to work. Bates himself gave Thomas a stony look as he settled into place, but didn’t make any remark on it. Thomas flashed him a smile that was supposed to look friendly, but it didn’t budge the stubbornly suspicious set of the older man’s face. Maybe smiles made him aggressive.

_ Or maybe he’s just biologically opposed to peace. _

“Alright if I settle here?” he asked Anna, belatedly initiating his play in this social maneuver they were trying to pull off. She kept her eyes forward, kneeling and keeping her hands clasped in silent prayer..

“Not much point in asking permission for something you’re already doing,” she said, subliminally checking his eagerness, “...but there’s no harm in it. Yes, you may sit here.”

Branson came in at the last possible second, looking every-bit the principled Irish revolutionary he was. He was also just as unhappy about being present for a sermon at St. Michael and All Angels as one would expect. He tucked in next to Thomas so he could slip out to start the car as soon as service ended - maybe even a little before, if Thomas was reading his expression right. He was the only one still in uniform because he was also the only one of them still on-duty for the morning. Thomas did not envy him that - only his relative mobility. The smell of fresh-cut flowers wafted throughout the sanctuary, and the light from the stained glass made something of a pretty kaleidoscope on the limestone floor. Simple beauties.

“We’re like to hear a lot of rot today,” he warned Branson under his breath. “Best make a break for it soon as you can.”

“You think?” Branson was obviously surprised at the sudden commiseration, but quickly warmed to it. 

“Dead sure, what with the war and all.”

Branson was more palatable to Thomas as a chauffeur than as Lady Sybil’s widower-turned-estate manager. It was an odd mix of snobbishness and betrayal he felt towards Branson’s later social ascent. He would always be an odd duck in a foreign pond; it was a leap books and plays idealized but which was actually quite rough to look at. Branson would smooth the edges of his convictions so he might fit in neatly with the set. Maybe there was something of the transition Thomas didn’t like because it was abstractly familiar.

Carson leaned over from the opposite end of the pew closest to the aisle and gave them a dark, penetrating look. In response, Thomas clasped his hands together and tried to look spiritual. Both he and Branson immediately straightened and put on the performance of turning their attention to Reverend Travis, who was now making his routine procession up the aisle behind the cross, before installing himself as an austere fixture in the front of the congregation. The holy triumvirate were named and blessed. Travis looked out from the wooden lectern-pulpit imperiously, drunk on the perceived importance of the message he was about to deliver. 

Thomas remembered it well, because scraps of this ridiculous throw-away sermon had stuck in his mind like a bad song. It had come to him every now and then in the trenches, and again when getting treatment in hospital for his blighty.

“You may be seated,” Travis instructed, and the space was filled with the sound of idly organized shifting as everyone got up from the floor. Once he was sure everyone was going to pay attention, he began the Collect.

“Almighty God, whom to truly know is everlasting life,” his voice carried easily over the sea of heads and hats. “We come to you today in reverence of your power and glory. Grant us so perfectly to know your will in the coming days, that our faith in you safeguards our country, our King, and our young men; may we be granted this through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.”

“Amen,” Thomas tonelessly echoed back, his voice blending with the chorus. He noticed Branson was silent beside him.

The scripture lesson. Then the gospel. It was all lined up in a row, and Travis was ticking off the boxes. Thomas sat through it all. Until finally:

“What is a man’s responsibility?” he asked the room. “What is the responsibility a man has to God and his country? In times such as these, that responsibility is service.”

_Of the_ _domestic sort?_ _I’ll tell Mr. Carson to press the spare livery. _

He had even less patience for this pomp now than he did as an actual twenty-year-old. He purposefully kept his mind vacant of all things biblical as Travis delivered the sermon from the pulpit. Thomas’s larger observations of religion and the afterlife were meaningless, however many he happened to have - the Crawleys were Anglican, so their servants were, too. He noticed Anna seemed fixated on the various installments of stained glass instead of the message Travis was spewing. Something courageous about patriotism, duty to king and country, God and goodness.

“We must combat the Godless atrocities of the Germans and their Kaiser,” Travis spoke with quiet fury, which was a kind of anger Thomas knew to be the most dangerous sort. “Mothers, you must sacrifice your sons; wives, your husbands; sisters, your brothers; children, your fathers. This is  _ your  _ service. Know that where they go, they bring with them the glory of God and England.”

_ Not even a week in and already talking about “glorious sacrifices”? Bang on, Travis. Excellent form. _

Thomas imagined he could see Lady Sybil rankle at Travis’s prescribed mission statement. The idea of nursing was probably already germinating in her mind. Maybe even as a result of this very sermon - though it would be a few years yet before anyone would witness the fruit.

“In this fight of Good against Evil, of God against the Devil...I do not think myself remiss in describing the coming conflict as a Holy War.”

It took everything in him not to sigh contemptuously. 

_ Nothing “Holy” about it. _

There were a few young boys - eleven, Thomas would guess - who any other Sunday would be slumping in their seats and bored to insanity (their sisters, too). But today they were rapt with attention, drinking up every word the Reverend had to say about the war. Later they might go and play soldier in the summer sun, thinking themselves invincible. Not all that different from those  _ actually _ old enough to enlist. Just substitute their sticks for service rifles, their Sunday suits for khaki and puttees.

Travis blathered on, building in vigor and patriotic energy. Then, the crux of his message. Thomas was visibly blanching - he remembered this. He looked across the sanctuary and locked his sight on the side of Dr. Clarkson’s head. There would be no escaping this with him there. To exclude himself would create too much interest. Especially given his need to fail the recruitment tests.

“Now, I ask all who have volunteered to stand. Be blessed and recognized,” the Revered looked about as - one by one, and then all at once - men of the appropriate age stood up. Thomas begrudgingly joined them, wishing he could disappear. He felt all the eyes on him - the Crawleys, looking across the aisle, the other volunteers, Carson (from whom he had withheld his enlistment). Anna, who had an idea of his intentions and didn’t condemn him for them. Branson, who was obviously confused. Hadn’t Thomas spoken against current events before the service started?

“Go forth, you Christian soldiers,” was the final missive. “Enlist. Go forth into the fray, face the fight with bravery. Do this with God in your hearts, and you will return home to a safe and prosperous England.” 

...

“I’d like to walk back,” Thomas told Carson on the gravel path outside after everyone had filed from the sanctuary. “Would it be alright, Mr. Carson, since it’s my half day?” 

The birds were singing in the trees, and children scattered about the church lawn in one large game of chase as their parents idled outside the doors for a chinwag. Their laughter rang like bells over the adult sounds of low and worried murmurs. Thomas had not been the only surprising volunteer, it seemed - there a few very cross-looking mothers discreetly having hot words with their eldest sons.

“I don’t see why not,” Carson looked reluctant. Like there was something else he wanted to say. “Although...”

Thomas braced himself.

“I cannot say I’m disappointed you volunteered, Thomas, only that you chose not to tell me,” Mr. Carson was grumbling but in a way that seemed softer than his usual method of beratement. Thomas found himself over prepared for criticism, and under prepared for approval. 

“I’m sorry,” Thomas beseeched the man. “Only this past week hasn’t seemed the right time to say anything...”

“When would the timing been appropriate? As you boarded the transport to France?” Carson finally dismissed him with an irritable wave of the hand, turning to climb up the front of the wagon to sit with the driver. Thomas used this moment to catch Anna’s eye before she too boarded. An invitation, one he’d be buggered if she didn’t take. But after a breathless moment she gave him an imperceptible nod. Acceptance. The time for warm relations had come again.

“That reminds me,” she said to Mrs. Hughes, “I need to pick up something for Lady Mary. Since it’s my half day as well and I’m in the village, I might as well stay.”

“What in Heaven would need picking up on a Sunday?” Mrs. Hughes mused, more curious than suspicious.

“I outsourced some shoe repair,” Anna explained, a little abashed. “And I know the shoemaker’s wife, who said I could come pick up today.”

“Very well,” the housekeeper acquiesced.

Anna exchanged some pleasant-sounding words with Bates that Thomas couldn’t quite make out before turning to walk away. Thomas took her cue and did the only sensible thing - he walked one way around the corner of the church so it would look like they were going different directions.

...

Anna caught up with Thomas easily on the other side, out of sight from the others.

“What happened to being subtle about it?” she asked him.

“I thought I was very subtle.”

“Don’t get overconfident. Not when I’m still cross with you,” she muttered.

He quickly grew quiet, thankfully, because Anna knew she didn’t have much tolerance in her for any more protestations. They walked in silence for a while, Anna leading the way through the village with Thomas following her. They walked past the empty village square, where in some years time a memorial for the war would be erected. Anna could still remember the ceremony; it was odd to think about with everything still being in its infancy.

“How are you going to avoid enlisting?” she asked under her breath, when they were out of church-going throng. It was a problem she’d turned over in her mind after waking up from nightmares - because it seemed that was the only kind of dream she had in this place, this time. And now Gwen was gone from the room so when she woke up, she woke up alone. Three days was too long for it. And she had to stay there, she couldn’t cross the hallway to the men’s side and knock on John’s door to ask for comfort. No matter how good her standing was, anything resembling unseemly relations would get her put out on her ear. And she was sure, at this point in their relationship, it would just make John confused. Or give him the wrong idea.

“I’m starting work on that tonight. Might need your help with it,” Thomas answered. Then asked, “Are we actually going to pick up some shoes?”

“The best lies are rooted in truth,” she responded. “I would have thought you’d known that.”

“The best lie I’m telling right now isn’t rooted in truth of any kind,” he said, and Anna didn’t know how to answer that if Thomas was referencing what she thought he was.

_ I doubt he’s talking about the army. _

They continued their walk through the village, past the cozy-looking connected cottages, currently crawling with tendrils of ivy and other summer greenery. They were heading in a direction out of the village, but which would eventually take them indirectly back to Downton Abbey if they followed it long enough. Anna stopped at the door of a little cottage that stood beyond the others, and knocked politely on the door.

“Good morning,” she greeted the woman who opened it with a smile. “Was just coming out of church and thought I’d pop over to pick up those shoes for Lady Mary.”

“Aye,” the woman looked harried, and Anna realized she was one of those mothers whose son stood up when Reverend Travis asked the volunteers to be recognized. “It’ll be a mo’ - just got back ourselves.”

“Yes, of course.”

The woman, the wife, the mother - Anna wished she could remember her name - disappeared back into the cottage and quickly emerged with the shoes; white calf-skin mules that had been re-soled and given a complimentary polish. 

“They’re not in a box, I’m afraid,” she apologized, accepting the payment Anna gave her in exchange.

“Lady Mary won’t mind,” Anna told her. Lady Mary wouldn’t even have to open the box if there  _ had _ been one.

The woman turned her attention to Thomas, who hovered in an unsure way behind Anna’s shoulder. Recognizing him.

“You enlisting, then?” she asked.

“Er, yes,” he said, caught off guard. “I am.”

“Well. Take care then. I hope you lads know what it is you’re fighting for. And what you’re doing to those you leave behind,” and she shut the door with an angry snap that Anna could feel was directed not at them, but at the cabal of generals, politicians, and kings she blamed for whisking her family away from her.

“I like her,” Thomas said as they resumed their path back to Downton.

“So tell me,” Anna asked. “What is your plan, exactly?”

Thomas got that “look” about himself when he was pleased with an idea he had - Anna wasn’t sure he was ever aware he was making it. A kind of smug assurance. It didn’t grate on her as it once did. It had been years since she’d last been the target.

“I’m going to make myself an unfit recruit.”

“You’re not...!” she couldn’t find the words. She wasn’t certain she even had the vocabulary.  _ Surely he wouldn’t? _

“Not what?” he looked at her sideways.

“You’re not going to tell them that-” 

Suddenly he caught Anna’s meaning and almost ground to halt. “No. Not that. I don’t plan on spending the next two years in  _ a jail cell _ , Anna.”

Thomas drew away from her in a way she couldn’t describe then, and Anna was at a loss with how to bring him out from behind the wall he’d thrown up between them. So she resorted to her usual method, which was kindness.

“I’m sure you’ve got something grand in mind,” she tried to encourage him.

“Not very grand,” he said dismissively. “Just going to fail the physical.”

“How?”

“That’s what I need your help for. If I go to the recruitment office on Wednesday, I can keep from getting sleep until then. I’ll start Monday night. And I’ll just have to blunder the eye exam. Maybe a few others”

“That seems like...” Anna trailed off, her words and thoughts unfinished. She narrowed her eyes.

A small snowy rabbit with eyes of blood twitched in the middle of the beaten pathway. One would expect it to be dusty - but it was pristine. There was nothing and everything wrong with it. It stared at her. It was so close. She slowly raked her vision down both sides of the natural brush that hedged their way. 

It was alone. 

“What?” Thomas craned his neck. “What is it?”

The rabbit turned, and began scurrying smoothly away.

“Hold these,” she thrust Lady Mary’s shoes into his chest and bolted after it.

“What -? Anna, wait!” the sound of Thomas’s feet followed hers as she darted further and further down the path. He could have overtaken her easily, but from the sound of it he was keeping a comfortable distance behind.

The rabbit was quick - she was trying to be quicker.

It swerved off the path, kicking and wriggling through the brush. Anna, falling further behind, gave a frustrated cry as she crashed through after it. She ignored the scrapes of the branches against her ankles, the way they grabbed and tore her skirts. The rabbit had disappeared from sight, but her determination to find it again propelled her into the grassy field beyond. She felt the sweat in her hair, and press of her clothes against her chest as she tried to breathe. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

Gasping for air, Anna slowed down. Silently, she cursed. Brushed away the tears of frustration that were brimming in her eyes. She'd forgotten just how much effort it took to do anything while wearing a full corset. She hunched over, hands propped awkwardly on her thighs, focusing on sucking breath into her lungs.

Thomas had already partially recovered, having slowed his pursuit some-two hundred meters back. Now he sidled towards her, brushing dust from his trousers and removing his suit jacket. Anna was faintly pleased to see Lady Mary's shoes still in his grasp.

“That works better if you lay down,” he advised.

“And...if you're not...wearing a corset,” she wheezed in response, lying on the grass front first. She kept herself propped up on her elbows. She had no care for grass stains - only breathing.

“No, other side,” he tried correcting, but she waved him off.

Thomas sat down heavily beside her. He waited, quiet and patient - it was funny to describe him that way. But then, she could recall Lady Sybil saying something positive about his bedside manner. During the war. Gradually her heart slowed and the flush faded from her skin. She inhaled and exhaled to the beat of birdsong and insects, still on the lookout for the white rabbit. The farmland stretched out pleasantly in every direction - green and rustling. 

It was gone. She closed her eyes and hung her head.

Eventually, Thomas asked her, “What was that about?”

“I wanted to catch the rabbit,” Anna muttered.  _ Foolish. _

“What rabbit?”

She looked at him, incredulous. “Didn't you see it? It was in the middle of the path.”

He shook his head. “You stopped dead and stared at nothing. Then you threw shoes at me face and ran off through the field.”

Anna swallowed. The implications of this difference in memory and sight did not bode well. She lifted herself onto her knees, and Thomas helped her to her feet after standing up himself.

“I saw it,” she insisted. “It was just like the rabbits the morning before I came here. Only white.”

The area, now she had the chance to actually look at it, was familiar. It wasn't that far from her future cottage. She started in it's direction and Thomas followed her.

“You saw rabbits?” It was a curious impulse which produced the question, not a derisive one.

“They followed Johnny and me almost to the Abbey. And then..." she hesitated. "They were in the painting. Everywhere you looked you saw them.”

“I didn't see rabbits. Real or in the sodding triptych.”

Anna briefly entertained the image of Thomas stuck in the butler's pantry, rabbits covering every surface. Nibbling alfalfa in one, undulating, unblinking mass.

“You'd certainly remember if you had,” she checked to make sure her hat was still pinned securely. She longed for the coming fashion when hats could just sit on a woman's head without being stapled to it. So much about getting dressed was still preoccupied with keeping everything in place.

“I saw myself,” he told her. She raised her eyebrows. 

“In the painting,” he added for clarification. “I was standing on the beach, watching the Apostle Peter drown. No one helped him.”

Anna nodded sagely, trying to demonstrate she could understand his horror, even if she was only half-sure she truly did. It was then that Thomas realized where they were going.

"Are we near your cottage?"

The barn that flanked the row of homes was beginning to loom in the distance.

"Yes," she started beating her way through a bush at the edge of the field, stumbling onto the pathway. Her feet were beginning to hurt, a dull ache creeping up her calves. Thomas followed with more care, holding Lady Mary's shoes above his head where branches could not snag on the soft leather.

“Why?”

“Because I want to be.”

The dirt and gravel on the road were loose - the feet of its non-existent tenants had not arrived to pack it down. She heard Thomas sigh - presumably because he'd just dusted himself off minutes ago. She rolled her eyes.

The doors and window frames had been painted, and the broken panes were replaced. But the project lay half-finished, and it would be waiting for completion until the war was over. At which point, Anna reckoned, it would need  _ another _ new coat of paint. Seeing this beloved place so empty and neglected made her sad. Like watching a child miss their chance at a prize from a booth at the fair.

“Which one’s yours?” Thomas asked, appraising each door.

“Don't you remember?”

“I've only been by the once.”

That was right. A lifetime ago. An evening she’d spent surrounded by the smell of whitewash, and one he’d spent banished in the rain. Though she supposed it was good he’d only “been by” once. It would’ve been alarming if he made a habit of watching her and John from the barn, after all.

“Consider this a formal invitation,” she gestured lightly to her future home.

Thomas looked at the broken gutters, the crumbled brick, and the missing shingles. Weeds sprouted in front of the door, the gardens ranged from withered to overgrown. Some children from the village had scraped their names on the exterior walls with stones.

He said dryly, “You have quite fashionable taste.”

Anna smiled, but soon settled back into her grief. She walked up to the window, which was caked with grime. She put her hand over her eyes to cut the glare from the sun and pressed up against the glass. Her free hand rested on the window itself. She could see the faint shape of the room - the fireplace, the doors to the kitchen and the bedroom. It felt like attending a funeral. She drew back, noting Thomas’s silence. He too was looking at the cottages, wistful, but she doubted he was thinking about how much he missed her family.

_ What  _ is  _ he thinking about? _

Anna decided she was going to find the words to ask something she’d thought of in church - watching the colored lights dance on the floor as the trees outside waved in front of the stained glass. Seeing the dim light that filtered onto the floor of the cottage’s sitting room had brought the notion back to the surface.

“Is it God doing this?” She felt very calm.

“What?” Thomas’s face curled.

“Are we stuck here because we’ve done things worth being punished for? Is this God’s will?”

“No God  _ I'd _ lay my alms to,” Thomas was positively spitting at the concept, but Anna pressed on.

“The triptych is religious,” she pointed out, wanting to be heard. Not wanting to be right.

“You really let Travis get inside your head, didn't you?” Thomas grumbled, turned, and began walking away. In the direction of Downton.

_ What's wrong with Travis?  _ She’d never felt anything but neutral towards the priest.

“Why does the idea upset you?” she trotted after him, eyebrows furrowed. “Isn't it what makes the most sense?”

“Nothing about this makes sense. Pretending it's all about religion doesn't mean we suddenly have the answers,” he looked at her sideways. “I want  _ facts _ .”

Facts. That irritated her a little bit. “Facts” to Anna meant observable statements - the interplay between those statements and the incomprehensible was to be expected. She started explaining, “The fact is the triptych has three panels. Each showing a different scene from the Bible -”

“But horrible.”

“Yes. Let me finish. There's something wrong in each of them. And now we're in the wrong time, the wrong place. We see the wrong things! Like the rabbit.”

“So, you're saying if all this is wrong, maybe it's because we're 'wrong'? Good God, Anna, that's a bleak outlook on the mercy of Christendom. And a wrong one.”

_ Wrong, wrong, wrong. _ It was a private taunt echoing itself over and over.

“It's just a thought I had. Do you have one? Any sort of explanation for why this is happening?” Because if he didn’t, Anna was fit to be tied.

“Believe me - I'll let you know when I do. I’ve already signed onto your mission to change things, but I’m not keen on the mechanics of  _ why _ . ”

Anna sighed, “You know, Thomas, you can be very trying.”

He flashed her a wan but appreciative smile, “You are aware - I know that already?”

“Just a reminder, then.”

“Noted.”

The rest of the walk back to the Abbey was comfortable even if it was mostly silent. They were officially well again, and that was good. Even if nothing else was.

...

_ And the world was ending. Sudden flashes of light lit the sky, the screams of whizzbangs and the roars of mortars making the ground quake - a new sound. It shook the bones in his flesh and his eyeballs in their sockets, and fighting the ground which rolled and bucked beneath his feet while trying to suck him down all the same. The earth underneath couldn’t decide - did it want to devour him, or shake him to pieces until he decorated the sky like the stars? _

_ It was hard enough trying to pick his way through the churning landscape as an individual - it impossible as a team. He fought against the instinct to scatter, to run and curl up in a trench where the depth might mean that the bomb which might kill him might do it a little slower. It was the basest and most powerful part of himself, and he was pushing it down down down until it was just a ringing in his ears, a loose feeling in his lungs. The weight of the stretcher balanced on his shoulder was pressing him further into the ground, but his carry-partner - Private Lindsey - was keeping up a good pace behind him. _

_ “Hurry up, Barrow!” Sergeant Piccard was bellowing from behind them. “There’s men over there that need medical attention!” _

_ “Aye, sir!” Thomas turned around, to ask a question. He didn’t remember what it was. This was it. This was what they’d trained for - but what if he didn’t know what to do? _

_ “Sir -” he began, but couldn’t finish it, because before he’d said another word Piccard slumped to the ground. “Sir!”  _

_ Both he and Lindsey scrambled over to him as best they could amidst the paralyzing cacophony, ignoring the crush and moans of other men. The endless conversation of machine weaponry. Chat-chat-chat. Chat-chat-chat. _

_ “Sergeant?” Lindsay rolled Piccard over, but they quickly saw. It.  _

_ If they hadn’t seen him go down with their own eyes. They never would have recognized him. _

_ “Christ,” Lindsey jerked backwards. “Christ!” _

_ He said it twice because the first time wasn’t enough. Expletives and pleas were easy to interchange. _

_ Thomas was more methodical than hysterical. He numbly lifted Piccard’s pannier from around what remained of his neck - inside there were countless valuables. Cotton bandages, scissors, morphine - his mind ran an inventory of contents instead of the bloody scene around him. He pulled the pannier over his own helmet, feeling the weight against his chest. Calculating how it would affect their speed. _

_ “We need to go,” he grabbed Lindsey’s grimy shoulder with his slippery, splinter-filled hand. “He’s for the birds, now.” He hauled the other lad to his feet, and the two of them carried out the last orders of dead man. _

_ They loaded wounded man after wounded man onto the stretcher with broken handles, carrying them one by one to the closest regimental aid post. With each carry, Thomas grew more and more certain it would be his last. But he kept pushing all the same - his fear down, Lindsey through the trenches, and himself forward. _

...

_ August 10, 1914 _

_ Monday _

“Thank you for doing this, Anna.”

They were once again seated around the table in the servant’s hall, in the small hours of the night. Both were fully clothed in their day-time wear.

“I don’t mind it, if I’m being honest,” she admitted. “I haven’t been able to sleep for a while now. Gives me something to do.”

“Me either,” Thomas shook his head. He looked into the darkened kitchen. “I’d hazard a chance at making some tea, but I’m not sure I could put everything back the way it was.”

Anna laughed, “Mrs. Patmore would catch on quick.”

“Well, Daisy makes the tea,” Thomas shrugged, “and if you ask me I think she needs a couple more years to sharpen up before she’d notice anything like that.”

“Well,” Anna retorted playfully, “You’re forgetting that Mrs. Patmore watches everything Daisy does. If we make tea, it’s Daisy that’ll get the lion’s share of grief - not us.”

“Back to the top of the food chain,” he sighed. “She acts like she’s her mum, honestly.”

“Isn’t she?” Anna opened up the sewing box she’d brought with her for the blouse she was altering - it was for herself. A donation from Lady Edith. It was a frilly thing, and Thomas couldn’t imagine Anna wearing it. He assumed she had plans in store that involved radical de-lacing procedures.

“I guess you’re right.” They sat in comfortable silence for a while, until Anna broke it.

“What was your mum like?” she asked, attention lightly focused on her sewing. “I always thought it’d been nice to have a mum like Mrs. Patmore.”

“You’re having me on,” Thomas felt he was being personally accosted.

“I’m not,” Anna insisted. “She’s very protective of our Daisy, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed,” Thomas muttered, thinking of all the other people Mrs. Patmore tended to be protective towards. Andy, for one.

“My mum could’ve taken a page or two from her book,” Anna inspected a seam closely before carefully starting to rip it.

“Mine was afraid to love us, I think,” Thomas surprised himself with his answer, but Anna didn’t seem to be that struck. She nodded, and kept seam-ripping. It was encouraging. “She had six children - only Vicky and I grew up.”

Then he realized that the methodical way Anna inspected the seams for the best place to rip them resembled the how he used to run melted paraffin over the seams of his army uniform to kill lice. When he put his tunic and trousers back on the heat of his body would warm the eggs the parents left behind. They’d hatch quick, and bite not long after. He swallowed the memory. Everything would happen the way he’d planned.

Anna said, “My mum lost one too, I think. Other than that it was just me and my sister.”

He didn’t know she had a sister - and Thomas considered that sort of general knowledge his specialty. Spend almost two decades with a person, and it turns out you’ve hardly scratched the surface of what they display on their outside. Astonishing.

“She only ever took an interest in us if we were ill,” Thomas responded by continuing, brushing away his discomfort and trying for a comic spin. “I got very good at pretending to have a temperature. A regular thespian, me.”

“That sounds terrible,” Anna was looking at him now, seeing right through him. She let out a breath, “Mine let our step-father hurt us.” 

Thomas noticed she kept the specific hurts vague, and instead of prying, opted to skirt the obscure confession by uncovering one of his own private stories. “My mum never got the chance to try and do anything about what _ my _ dad did. She tried her best when she could, I suppose. Loved us in her way. Then she died.” 

It was also around that time Phyllis moved to a new city to enter the workforce, Vicky started an apprenticeship with a seamstress, and Thomas found himself alone at home with only his father, a clock shop, and alcohol for company. What little remained of his childhood years by then had been very empty. He hadn’t thought about that in a very long time.

“I don’t wish mine any ill-will, either,” Anna snipped off a gaudy-looking button and lined up one more in her fashion to replace it. Simple. “It was a complicated situation. I just wish she would have done more.”

The ugly little fixture was tucked into her box, destined to find its way onto some other garment.

Thomas wondered if he’d actually cracked her coded words, moments earlier. Because from his perspective, if that was how she truly felt about her mum, Anna really was due for sainthood. Or in denial. 

“Why ‘mums’?” Thomas wondered after a while. “Seems an odd topic for the middle of the night.”

“Are there rules for these conversations?” she asked him. “I think all conversation restrictions lift after twelve-thirty. Anyhow - I had a dream that made me think of mine.”

“Bad dream?” The dream he’d had last night had replayed itself several times already. They kept coming back, like ghosts on rotation. He ignored the stuttering in his chest.

“Yes,” she paused. “How’d you know?”

He twitched his mouth into a thin smile. “They’re all I’ve had since my arrival. They were everything, at first. Like this” - he jerked his head to indicate their surroundings - “but now they’re just dreams.”

Anna considered this. “I’m glad mine are only in my head. Living them once was enough.”

_ Try twenty, thirty, forty times.  _ And those were all guesses, because he’d lost true count. It all melted into one terrible memory that visited him again in his sleep. He shuddered. Thomas would be tired tomorrow, it was true, but staying awake meant he would be spared the nightmares for a while.

“About that - ‘once’, and all. What are we going to do to fix-”

“Focus on failing first,” she had refixed her attention on the blouse. “Then we’ll think about fixing the rest.”

It was unusual, having these vulnerable moments with Anna by choice. It was like being stripped down, but not necessarily in a bad way. Instead of being ashamed by his emotional nakedness, he found it was a kind of relief. Like shedding a crusty bandage. He and O'Brien had never discussed such things at length. Looking back, he was sure it was because both of them prized the safety of their softer spots more than they valued emotional intimacy. His reasons were rather self-explanatory - hers, he could only guess at. The skein of their friendship had been stretched taut over silent understandings, all formed in the crucible of contempt for the cages their worlds kept them in. And smoking, of course.

Jimmy had been a friend, and a good one. But ever since the whole debacle with the midnight kiss, Thomas had maintained a measured physical and emotional distance with the younger man. He didn't want to scare him off, give him the wrong impression; every word and action they exchanged held at least one or two silent second guesses on Thomas's part. If he'd managed to be so incredibly wrong already, he knew he needed to be careful. If not for their friendship, then for his own sake. For the way he was, and wanted to be.

When Jimmy had left on that final coldish morning, he'd smiled and said, “If anyone had told me I'd have been friends with a man like you, I'd not have believed them.”  And then they shook hands. And Jimmy left. And when Thomas was retching in the clinic where he paid for that bloody treatment, when he lay awake at night because the fevers wouldn't let him sleep, the worst thing he could imagine was Jimmy seeing what he was trying to do himself and saying, “Good for you,” after all. He didn’t think he would. But there was always the uncertainty.

Andy was alright for a while, but their initial harmony was smothered in its cradle. They got on well enough and Thomas was thankful for Andy’s part in saving his life. But they occupied very different positions now than when Andy had started. Thomas was his direct overseer, a dynamic which did not engender closeness. But he did come to Thomas for book suggestions and - on the rare occasion - advice about something Daisy would like as a present. Andy had it in his head Thomas would be “good with that sort of thing”. And he wasn’t sure how to tell Andy that his appreciation for men didn’t give Thomas an in-born guide to women’s tastes.

For a long time, as far as he was concerned, the only person at Downton he fully trusted was Phyllis. She’d known him, and still wanted to know him. She completed trial after trial, gaining a little more of his confidence with each determined assurance that she would not abandon him, in spite of how difficult he made it to stay. She would not betray him. She would protect him. She would not hurt him. She would save him. But there were things he didn't talk about with her, either. He’d never told her directly about Richard, and he wasn’t sure why. He’d considered it many times. It might have had something to do with finally having a private life no one he worked with knew about. But now he was here, and Richard didn’t know, and there was no one to tell him he’d gone missing.

_ Maybe I should have told her. _

With Richard he could be open. He didn’t have to second-guess how close he was sitting, or how long he held eye contact. He didn’t have to think about what he’d have to provide him in return for his help, his time. Because Richard didn’t keep score, and neither did Thomas. The only thing that counted when they were together was themselves. The only things numbered were the hours they could be alone. They were alike in all the ways that mattered. When they touched, Thomas was as close as he’d ever been to the essence of truth. He could tell Richard anything.

Anna lobbed him some more conversation starters to keep them occupied and he readily played along. They talked about lighter topics; favorite colors, strange animals from faraway places they’d seen up close, the best kind of weather and which season was the most intolerable.

It was pleasant.

...

_ August 11, 1914 _

_ Tuesday _

“Mr. Carson was fit to skin you after dinner!” Anna laughed before growing wary of how loud it was.

“You can make fun, but it’s no joke to me.”

“Don’t look so down in the mouth,” she pulled out the blouse she’d worked on the night before. Her goal for this midnight work session was to finish altering the sleeves - her arms weren’t quite as long as Lady Edith’s. She tapped her forefinger against her thumb, preparing herself mentally for the physical discomfort of hand stitching. Thimble or no thimble, her fingers always wound up feeling sore somehow. She enjoyed the work, though, because the last time she’d made a mess of it. It had been completely unwearable. This time she’d been sure to exercise more care with the seam ripping. 

“It turned out alright in the end, didn’t it?” She marked the fabric she was going to trim with a dotted chalk line - her altering skills were not lacking by any means, but Anna would never have the self-confidence to say it looked professional. She was more suited to mending. And she missed her sewing machine.

“He gave me ten-minutes of tongue lashing,” Thomas complained. “I only  _ looked _ like I was falling asleep, I weren't arse-end up and snoring at the table.”

He had sheets of paper and a stubby pencil before him.

“What are those for?” she pointed at them with her fingers which pinched the needle.

Thomas looked determined. “I’m going to make a crossword puzzle.”

She smiled. “Is it a good idea to make one on no sleep?”

“Then it’ll be easy to solve later,” he rubbed at one red glassy eye. Anna’s own felt like they were made of lead. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to pursue such a delicate task on such little sleep, but if she wasn’t doing something with her hands she could easily see herself falling asleep. And Thomas soon after. And then Mrs. Patmore would find them at the table in the morning for the second time in a fortnight and there’d be all sorts of awkward questions and suppositions.

“Won’t you know the answers, if you’ve written them?”

“I’m not going to be solving them,” he picked up the pencil and began carefully drawing a grid. “Just want something to do that makes me use this.” He tapped his head twice.

“Fair enough,” she started pushing her needle through the fabric, deciding on a backstitch. It’d be harder to see on the outside and would hold her alterations together for years if she did it right.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he muttered, looking at the half-completed grid. “Do you realize how unusual it is for me to admit that?”

“Given it’s probably the second time I’ve ever heard you say such a thing - yes,” Anna glanced at his work. “Try thinking of the words first, perhaps?”

“Words  _ before _ the cross...,” his gaze settled on the fabric in her hands. “Blouse. Five letter word, across. A woman’s casual garment.”

“Tops to go with skirts,” she added helpfully.

“Pokers. A fireplace rod.”

“Pencil-!”

“- a writing instrument,” he quickly recorded the fruit of their teamwork. It wasn’t very hard, but it was enjoyable. Anna had succeeded in removing most of the lacy extravagance from the garment. Instead of throwing it away, she wrapped it into a loop around her fingers and tucked it away in her sewing kit. She was not about to discard something so preciously expensive - it could easily be recycled into a gift. Edging for a Christening blanket, or decoration on a throw pillow.

“That looks better,” Thomas observed her handiwork. He blinked heavily.

“You’re tired,” she told him. “And I’m just the same. We’ll look at it again in the morning and see if ‘better’ is still the case.”

“My sister liked to say most things did look better in the morning,” he was sketching absently outside the grid. Little circles. “She picked it up from Phyllis. Always the positive one.”

“People said that about my sister - positive and all.”

Thomas looked at her.  “I didn’t know you had a sister until last night.”

Anna shrugged, “You wouldn’t. I don’t talk about her with others, except John.”

“Did she do something so terrible wrong? To not talk about her.” Of course he’d want to interrogate such a cryptic response.

“No. I did.” Something she’d been very pointed about keeping out of her mind for many years. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she’d ever let it hook her conscience. Instead, it did not consume her whole. It eroded her away in parts. To Thomas’s credit, he did not question her on this. She felt a surge of appreciation.

“What’s her name?”

** _“Please don’t go,” Eliza held onto Anna’s wrist, her eyes wide and watery. “Don’t leave me alone here.”_ **

“It was Eliza,” Anna told him. “Eliza Lane, once when she married.”

“‘ _ Was _ ’?” It was always interesting how the simple use of past-tense could cause such distress.

“I wrote her in 1926. To tell her about Johnny. Her husband responded only to say she'd died three years before,” Anna undid a stitch. She wanted it to be presentable, and her sleepy fingers were making that difficult.

“You feel you missed your opportunity to see her,” his words were a statement, hinting at recognition of the feeling.

“You could say so, yes. I’m mostly sorry I never got to apologize,” she looked at him. “I’m not going to say what for. For personal reasons, so I hope you don’t mind.” 

“No need to explain. I know a bit about estranged sisters.”

“You don’t talk to...?”

“Vicky. No, I don’t,” he turned back to the crossword. Naturally, he wouldn’t. Anna felt like a fool, but she didn’t want to assume anything either. They lapsed into a silence that felt a little melancholy, and as Anna checked the stitched on the buttons she thought of her childhood.

Eliza was Anna’s junior by two years - always a little prettier, too, in Anna’s opinion as the elder sister. She had been shyer, though. She blushed easily and had a laugh that sounded like a bird. She didn’t like any sugar in her tea, but people always gave it to her anyway, because they assumed she didn’t care for strong tastes. She’d only corrected them if Anna was with her because Anna gave her the confidence she wasn’t born with. If people thought Anna gentle and kind, Eliza was three-times what her sister was.

Once, on the way back from church, they’d come across a bird that had fallen out of a nest. His mother had made her nest too low; perched precariously inside a thready-looking bush. 

“Look!” Eliza rushed forward and gently rescued him from the pavement.

“Eliza, love, don’t-” their mother began, but it was too late. Eliza already held him against her chest.

He resembled a fully-realized robin more than a wormy-looking chick, but the little thing did not yet have the talent for flight. It peeped weakly, hungrily. Anna reached out to stroke a finger along it’s feathery head, but her mother stopped her.

“It’s dirty,” she warned her. “Don’t touch it.”

“Can I take him home, mum? Please?” Eliza’s eyes were full of light.

“Put it back in the nest.”

“Mum-” Anna tried to protest on her sister’s behalf, but she didn’t need to, because Eliza continued her appeal.

“Look at it, though. His mum hasn’t been back in ages - he’ll die if I put him back.”

“Now, Eliza -” Anna noticed how grey their mother’s hair was beginning to get at the temples. All the lines that creased her forehead, her crow’s feet. She always got this way after they went to church and the neighbors asked why Enoch, her husband, wasn’t with the rest of the family. She’d explain it was his late nights out working, but really it was because he was astonishingly drunk.

“I’ll take care of him, and I’ll keep him under my bed,” nothing gave Eliza a platform like animals did. “He won’t bother Enoch or no-one!”

“Put it back. Now,” this was final.

Eliza, defiant, held him for a few moments more before reluctantly turning to deposit him back in the lopsided nest. Her shoulders were hunched against the wind and her overwhelming emotion.

“It’s mum’ll be back,” their mother began walking again, bade them to follow. “You’ll see.”

“We’ll come back later,” Anna whispered to her sister, taking her by the hand. 

But Eliza’s eyes weren’t rimmed with tears as she expected. They were lit with satisfaction. “We won’t need to.”

She opened her pocket - Anna peered inside. There he was, nestled comfortably in it’s woolen depths. Anna’s perception of her sister changed that day. She began to see her as someone who, while in need of protection from the world’s hardness, could make her way in it. She could survive it. 

She named the robin ‘Oliver’, and Eliza raised him with care and success. He ate worms they dug from the community garden the village women kept in the green. They usually had a hard time keeping it safe from the livestock, and were planning on moving it for this reason. The deserted garden plots, full of rotting vegetables, made the perfect place for finding Oliver’s meals. He would perch on Eliza’s shoulder in their bedroom - he was a miraculously quiet bird. Which was good, because Enoch wouldn’t have liked it. The noise, the bird, the worms - any of it.

“He needs to be free,” Eliza said one afternoon, watching Oliver eat the daily offerings from Anna’s palm. “He needs to be somewhere he can sing.”

They took him to the yard by the church and left him on a branch.

“Go on, now,” Eliza said goodbye as he fluttered away. Not a week later, Anna left, too.

_ Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. _

Thomas was tapping the pencil lightly on the table. He hadn’t written down a new word for the puzzle in ages, but Anna had kept working on her backstitching. He was nervous.

“You’ll be alright,” she told him, and he looked up. “Tomorrow won’t be hard. You’ll see.” She felt like she was making a promise she couldn’t guarantee. But Thomas looked like he appreciated it all the same.

...

_ August 12, 1914 _

_ Wednesday _

A crucial part of Thomas’s plan involved going to the recruitment office in Ripon. Last time, he’d just gone to the local office at Downton Village. They’d processed him and gave him the army stamp of approval - all five of the overwhelmed men, a smattering of local officials all who had passing familiarity with him. Sometimes they came to the yearly tenant's banquet, and Thomas served them tea and sandwiches. They’d be crushed by the demands of the volunteers, without a doubt. But they also knew him, and that would poke every possible hole in the ruse he was trying to construct.

So instead, he walked for about three excruciatingly tiring miles towards Ripon before catching a ride with an old farmer in a trap carriage headed the same way. It was a pleasant ride, filled with idle conversation about crop yields (about which Thomas knew little) and what it was like being a footman for the Crawleys (about which the farmer knew nothing). And even if the conversation hadn’t been pleasant, it was better than walking the remaining six miles. With every jostle in the road Thomas fumbled sleepily at his pocket to make sure Mrs. Patmore’s glasses were still tucked there. They’d be an invaluable prop for his charade.

Last night, after Anna had gone up, he’d lingered to be sure they didn’t leave any signs someone would find come morning. Mrs. Patmore’s shaded glasses were sitting, innocuous, on the table she used to read and write receipts. She’d worn them religiously for the prescribed amount of time and then some - but as the second week wore on she used them less and less, until finally she abandoned them completely. He picked them up gently and opened their arms, holding the lenses to his candle’s light. The flame came through dark and smokey, just as the wearer’s eyes looked from the onlooker’s perspective. He closed the arms, turning them over in his hands. Then, recognizing a stroke of genius, slipped them into his pocket. 

“You’re looking bogeyed this morning,” Mrs. Hughes had remarked at breakfast. “Nervous for your recruitment examination?”

“No,” he said. Which was a lie.

Thomas stifled a yawn; the collective exhaustion from two nights without sleep had caught up to him. Just as he planned. The edges of the servant’s hall swam ever so slightly in his vision, and he had to concentrate to correctly judge the distance between his hand and the bread basket.

“I hear it’s real easy to get them to pass you,” William said brightly, jealousy in his eyes. He’d stopped mooning over his personal tragedies in public, and had taken up the banner of loud patriotism instead. Ever since Thomas’s apology - and the reveal he’d volunteered - William was quicker to strike conversation. Having concluded his own army service inevitable, William was already addressing him like a brother-in-arms. “You’ll pass quick as you can say your name, no doubt.”

“But will they still want him once they get to know him?” Bates sniped with a smile from his corner of the table.

“I don’t think being likable is an army pre-requisite,” Thomas shot back. “Unless they let you fight the Boers against their better judgement?”

Anna held a monopoly on uncomfortable glances throughout their exchange. Bates glowered. Mrs. Hughes rolled her eyes at all of it. William looked amused, and subsequently surprised he’d found Thomas entertaining. Carson just choked on his tea. 

“Enough!” he commanded. “Let the rest of us enjoy breakfast in peace, if you please.”

Before Thomas left, Mrs. Hughes motioned him into her sitting room, closing the door behind them.

“ _ Are _ you nervous?” she asked in that piercing way she possessed - this exchange had happened in short form the first time around, but Thomas garnered his big reveal about O’Brien had brought him up a few notches in the housekeeper’s estimation. He got up-close and-personal-encouragement now. He didn’t mind it - he quietly liked Mrs. Hughes, even when in the midst of her disapproval. He didn’t rebuff her, as before.

“A little,” he admitted.  _ Very, very much.  _ He held his cap tightly in his hands. If he didn’t pay attention, he’d soon start worrying it’s edges on impulse.

“That’s understandable - it’s a big first step on a long journey.”

Or, if everything went according to plan, a very short one.

Mrs. Hughes continued, “Just do your best. Will they be sending you away then and there?” 

She was concerned. He didn’t know why this was affecting him so deeply. She’d shown him this sort of softness before, which he’d accepted when in dire straights. That was the thing, though. All her kindness he accepted when he was dangerously sympathetic. And it made sense - Mrs. Hughes wouldn’t wish death or injury upon him for any reason. Or anyone else for that matter, lest the thought make him feel too special. Even still, it meant something. He accepted her interest and tucked it away somewhere he could revisit it. Thomas blinked and tried to silently clear his throat. His words came out foggy anyway, and all attempts at stoicism were shot through.

“No. They won’t be. I’ll have to take the forms they give me and go to Richmond.”

“Not right away?” she wanted to be sure.

“I have a few days yet.”

“Good,” Mrs. Hughes smiled warmly. “Then we’ll have time for a proper good-bye.”

As he walked through the streets of Ripon, following the posted signs and the distant pep of a military band, Thomas thought on their conversation. A proper goodbye - yes. 

_ That would be very nice. _

...

Anna couldn’t help being distracted. She kept thinking of all the ways Thomas’s plan could go wrong - what if they took him anyway? She remembered the stories about the recruiters who passed teenagers almost immobile with rickets. They simply looked the other way, or granted those children the extra two years they desperately wanted while filling out their paperwork. They should’ve come up with something else, something surer. They could’ve gone out to the stables and driven the trap carriage over his foot. Accidentally. They even could’ve even had his hand shot again, though she doubted he’d concede to that one. She wondered if he would tell her exactly how it happened originally, if she asked. Likely not. They’d bared many parts of their pasts, but in spite of its relevance he didn’t talk about the war. They only discussed how he was going to avoid conscription.

“Excuse me, Anna?” Gwen’s replacement was an energetic young girl from the village. Her name was Ruby. Anna’s preoccupation was resulting in some lackluster training.

“Is there anything doing with these?” She held up the glass jar of biscuits Mrs. Patmore kept supplied for the family’s bedside table.

“No. Take one if you like - they won’t mind. But don’t make it a habit.”

“I couldn’t,” Ruby put the jar down with care, fearful of jeopardizing her position on her first day.

“Sure you can,” Anna tossed one into her mouth - doubtless it was delicious, but she was so nervous it tasted like sawdust.

Ruby looked at her like she was the strangest person she’d ever met. Anna was beyond self-consciousness.

“So, is there anything else we do to turn out this room?” It was a sensible question; each room had its quirks when it came to caring for them.

Anna shook her head. She wanted water. “No. Onto the next one.”

“But you said this’d be our last one today?”

The two maids entered the hallway - Anna first, Ruby trailing eagerly behind. She saw John walking toward them; his expression brightened when their eyes met. She felt an unconscious smile crinkle the corners of her own. If she was quick enough, they could have a moment alone.

“Did I?” Anna responded, belated. “Yes, I did! Run down to the hall, then. I’ll meet you there in a few and show you around the store cupboard.”

“That was clever,” John praised her as he drew nearer and Ruby farther.

“It was true,” Anna grinned at him. As always, his presence was a balm.

“Breaking in the new recruit?”

“Rather poorly, I think,” she sighed.

“I don’t believe that for a second!”

They began walking at a pace easy for John to maintain. She knew his leg was bothering him badly today by the way he held his eyes closed longer when he blinked. He once told her it was a moment of relaxation. He didn’t have the time to take the breaks he needed to recuperate, so he took them a second at a time as he worked. She wasn’t convinced the method was very effective.

“You alright?” he asked after she didn’t return his flirtation. So perceptive. Anna was not alright - she wanted to lay down on the floor and sleep. She could shed tears from exhaustion. She decided to tell John the truth and make the most of it.

“I’m afraid for Thomas. Going to war, like.”

“You’re afraid...for  _ Thomas _ ?” His incredulity was a chance to insert her agenda of peace. 

“Yes! And I have to tell you - this morning was not your finest moment.”

“What - all that about the army?”

“You should have just let him be.”

“Why are you suddenly in his corner?” He was curious, not offended.

“He’s different since Miss O’Brien left,” she tried. “He’s...not as hard.” 

Everyone else had noticed. Anna might not have been speaking to Thomas but she could still watch him. Daisy’s infatuation had faded into something more conducive to friendship; William and Mrs. Patmore quickly softened up once Daisy securely was out of Thomas’s infamous cross-hairs. He had the kitchen maid’s endorsement, which was priceless in the eyes of those who cared for her. Mrs. Hughes was impressed with his sudden leap in maturity, which meant Mr. Carson would soon take some sort of notice. It was a cascade of subtleties. 

John was the only hold out, and that was because John was stubborn. It was hard for him to give people second chances. His life experiences had made him naturally suspicious and defensive (something her husband and Thomas had in common, she reflected). His standards of honorable conduct were terminally high, even when compared with Mr. Carson’s.

“I’d agree with you if I’d thought the same,” his response fell in line with what she expected it to be. “A dog that turns on an unkind keeper still has teeth to bite with.”

Anna tried appealing to his sense of honor, “Can you give him a chance to be someone else?”

“Why? Has he changed greatly in the past week?”

_ Oh, John. If only you knew _ . She felt in many ways she wasn’t the Anna he fell in love with. He was the John she’d loved, but he wasn’t  _ her  _ John. He wasn’t the John who’d lived sixteen years beside her. She, at this point, was much more of a stranger to him than he was to her. As far as he knew, she was aware of his wife and his criminal record. As far as he knew, it would be two more years before he’d propose. Everything had the look of sunshine and roses from his perspective. She envied him that - but because she loved him, she was content to let him see it that way.

“He’ll surprise you, if you let him.”

John seriously considered this. His brow was furrowed with deep thought when he finally spoke, “I’ll let him. For your sake.”

Anna’s endorsements held their own considerable power. “Thank you - truly.”

“Anything for you,” he promised.

She wanted to say she loved him.

...

Mr. Carson checked his pocket watch with increasing frequency and irritability in the hours preceding the ringing of the gong. Anna was witness to his distress.

“Is it just us tonight, Mr. Carson?” William asked, running the odds that Thomas would come back, clean up, and change in time to serve the meat dish. They were not in Thomas’s favor.

“So it would seem,” the butler grumbled. 

“I don’t think they’ll mind you’re short a footman,” Mrs. Hughes was attempting to head any ill-will off at the pass, a maneuver Anna observed with admiration. “We knew this might happen - I think those recruitment centers are likely overwhelmed.”

William was a visible mix of pleasure and disappointment; he had made his desire to join up very obvious, but available rewards in the short-term were found in the coveted duties of first footman. He was eager to prove himself in so many ways.

“What’s that?” John indicated the crossword puzzle Thomas made the night before - Anna, while packing everything away, had tucked in into her sewing box. She was looking for an old brooch that might pair well with a project she intended to start for Lady Edith, digging past spools of thread and needles of various sizes. 

“That’s a puzzle,” she told him.

“Did you make it?”

“No - Thomas did,” she opened it up on the table to show him. 

“Really? It’s a neat little thing,” he was trying already to make good on the promise he’d made her that afternoon.

“Ask him about them, if you like. He knows more than I do,” Anna smiled, pushing back from the table to lay out the girl’s evening gowns before Mr. Carson rang the gong. She’d started putting together ensembles and accessories she knew they would eventually become partial to out of habit, and they praised her unexpected sense of taste. She knew exactly what they would want to wear tonight, organizing the looks in her mind as she jogged up the servant’s stairs.

“We really should ask papa to up your wages,” Lady Sybil told her later, eyes sparkling as she admired the jewelry hanging from her neck. The glass beads were simpler fare than what her sisters sported, but they were still beautiful. The hints of Bohemia could already be glimpsed in her styles. “I never would’ve considered putting this necklace with this gown - but the beads bring out the color of the silk in such a lovely way.”

“Sybil, don’t talk so frankly about money,” Lady Edith chided her. “It’s not at all proper.”

“Neither is giving someone unsolicited advice,” Lady Mary entered the room and slid the words in like a smooth-edged knife, prompting Lady Edith’s quick exit as she settled into her place before the mirror.

Lady Sybil was unimpressed. She continued her conversation with Anna in spite of Edith’s snooty advice and Mary’s targeted insults.

“How is the working woman supposed to claim what she’s due from her employer if she doesn’t have an ally in her mistress?”

“I feel I’m in good hands with you, milady,” Anna found the best option when thrust into these conversations was to float above them, bobbing gently atop the currents of conflicts which raged underneath. Clearly, the suffragette's magazines and pamphlets Lady Sybil kept in her bedside table had made their permanent impression. Anna only wished there was a more direct way she could let the young Lady know her sympathies were very similar (the main difference was Anna possessed - at this point - a more class-conscious awareness of the dynamics between the suffragettes who had seasons in London and those who went with them to clean up after their debut balls).

“Don’t feel obligated to placate her, Anna,” Lady Mary was sharp on every front. Anna pressed her lips together - this did not actually concern her. She was merely an observer; a prop moving from side to side in the sister’s conversation.

“And you don’t need to be cruel because you’re upset,” her younger sister straightened her necklace.

“If it wasn’t me, the responsibility would just fall to someone else.”

Lady Sybil stood up, still toying absently with her beads, holding her gloves tightly in her other hand. “It’s not a vacancy you always need to fill,” she caught Anna’s eye. “Thank you, Anna.” And then she left as well.

Lady Mary sighed. “They’re all cross with me. I can’t bear to be around them, I truly can’t.”

Anna responded by helping her keep her necklace from tangling in her hair. She pinned up the loose strands that brushed the back of Lady Mary’s neck; the clasp would not catch in them. “They’ll come around, milady. Time heals all wounds.”

“I wish I could go back,” Lady Mary was speaking to herself now. “I would do so much so differently.” She meant, Matthew, of course.

“That’s an interesting idea,” Anna watched her complete the final steps of her routine. The dabs of perfume, and running a finger over her eyebrows to smooth them. Get all the hairs running in the same direction.

Anna wondered how close to Downton Thomas was. The longer he stayed gone, the more she worried. If she could, she would tell Lady Mary that trying to change the past wasn’t worth the heartache. Instead, she left to ready Lady Grantham for dinner as well.

...

He was aching everywhere. His vision was hazy with exhaustion. He thought his feet were about to fall off and his head was going to explode. But he was so, so happy. Thomas trudged up the drive to Downton; he’d not been as lucky coming back from Ripon as he’d been going there. He’d walked most of the way. But it was good in a way; it would be easy to lend physicality to the emotion of his performance. And he’d missed serving dinner - what a blessing. He’d avoided making a mess of it last night, but there were no such promises for today. The late setting sun on the horizon gave him some indication of the time, and walking through the back door gave him confirmation.

The kitchen was busy but not frantic, winding down to dish washing instead of preparation. The dessert course was being served - the new maid, Ruby slide past him carrying a Victoria sponge cake.

“‘Scuse me!” she said brightly, carefully balancing the serving dish, taking care not to dirty her black uniform. The creamy white filling would easily mark it.

He pressed himself against the wall, half for her benefit and half for his own. He felt he could sleep standing up.

“Thomas?” Mrs. Hughes spotted him and drew near, a hesitant smile on display. “What news?”

He simply shook his head.

“Oh, dear,” she tutted; Thomas was convinced he’d caught a glimpse of shocked relief on her face. “Well, you can be sure of your place here, rest assured. Whyever did they turn you down?”

“All they said was my heart wasn’t good enough,” he’d borrowed the idea from what he knew of Branson’s future. He hung his head with what he knew was want for sleep. Mrs. Hughes would take it for grief. Which was exactly what he wanted.

...

“How’d you do it?” she asked, holding her tea close. They were standing against a wall of the courtyard, the only light coming from the windows and the moon. It felt very conspiratorial, drinking from tea cups without saucers in the dark. Sharing in the truth.

“First, I kept stepping on the heels of the bloke in front of me. Obviously on purpose, but it looked an accident. He hauled off ready to sock me one after about the third time I did it, but I wore Ms. Patmore’s glasses,” he had that subtle, self-satisfied look about him again as he slipped the eyewear out of his pocket just enough for Anna to recognize them in the very dim light. “He says to me, ‘Oi, what’s summat like yourself signing up for the army? Tryin’ to get us all gutted by the Hun?’ and I say, ‘Just trying to do my bit,’ all earnest-like. Then the one behind me goes, ‘Let him take his chance, man. He should have a go at it - same as the rest of us.’”

Anna stifled a laugh. It was wrong to make light in the face of something as serious as the war - but he was recounting the tale with such liberty, and she was so happy their plan worked. The glasses ploy was ad-libbed and incredible. It was impossible not to delight in it. Anna had come to the realization that when you took away the surliness, the awareness of his own authority - Thomas was  _ funny _ .

“So I’m waiting in line, and it’s going very slow, and I start acting like I can’t hear what they say to me. All, ‘Sorry, what was that?’ and ‘Come again?’ It’s my turn for examination, same thing, ‘Can’t hear you, sir, very sorry. Would you mind speaking up, please?’” 

Told second-hand it almost sounded like the plot of a Charlie Chaplin picture. The only difference was Anna made up a private audience of one.

“I was squinted at the board they told me to read - made sure to get two right. Didn’t want to be too obvious. Then after the physical they pull me aside to give the verdict, but I’m acting like I don’t know what’s coming. ‘Well, what do you need me to sign?’ and everything, and they say very sadly, ‘Lad, I’m afraid we can’t send you across the channel. Your dedication to your country is admirable, but there are better ways for men with afflictions such as yours to serve. Have you considered working in a factory, or a clerical office?’” he paused dramatically.

“And then what?”

He lifted his chin. “I cried.”

“You  _ cried _ ?” She hated the experience of crying herself - she couldn’t imagine summoning up the determination to do it in front of a panel of scrutinizing men. She could count on one hand the people she’d openly cried around for her own sake. Funerals didn’t count because those were for someone else. It was alright to be emotional there, within the provided social parameters. Anna expected Thomas’s feelings on the subject were even more private than hers, if possible. She’d seen his tears comforting him after Lady Sybil’s death, and when he left Downton to take that dead-end butler’s position on the other side of York. 

“They showed me out right quick,” he sipped his tea. Anna mirrored him and drank from her own. They both suddenly looked and felt like people who’d spent the last two days without rest, which they were.

“I’ve sussed out the next step,” he told her. “Thought of it on the way back”

“Yeah?”

“I send a letter to Phyllis. Tell her to come here. Has her ladyship started looking yet?”

“She’s been talking about putting an ad in  _ The Lady _ \- I like your idea, though. Phyllis is lovely.”

The more people they could surround themselves with who were unequivocally on their side, the better.

“We’re wracking up victories,” Anna smiled.

“Touch wood,” was his quiet, pleased response.

“I’ve convinced Mr. Bates to give you a chance to ‘redeem’ yourself,” she was very happy to let him know. “He’s quite on board. So it’s on you to be friendly, now.”

“I should be glad you’ve got him wrapped around your finger. Just so. Very impressive.”

“He is my husband,” Anna laughed. “Even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

...

Thomas went to bed relaxed - the most restful he felt since time slowed down, in fact. Tiredness tugged at every part of him, but he couldn’t hand himself over to oblivion just yet. The weather had tempered and settled into the comfortable patterns of summer turning into fall. The mornings were cold and the afternoons were perfect. He got under his covers - they were softened by use, not because they were luxurious. He’d felt enough expensive sheets between his fingers to know the difference. But they felt familiar. He let his head sink into his pillow. The mattress had not worn through yet so he couldn’t feel the iron springs against his back. He closed his eyes, drew his feet closer to his body while keeping them flat on the bed. His hands slid past the waistband of his pyjama pants - slowly and persistently making the rounds to all his responsive places.

It was a familiar routine, but one he hadn’t felt safe enough to indulge in he didn’t know how long. He imagined it was Richard’s warmth that surrounded him, that cupped him. Richard was whispering in his ear, telling him soft and sweet things. Good things - all about Thomas. Richard was gently pressing his lips against Thomas’s as he began slowly working his shaft, running the pad of his thumb over the head and pressing gently in spots that made Thomas gasp for silent open-mouthed breaths. 

It was easy to be quiet because he’d needed to be for such a long time. His eyes closed tight, his head crushed backwards into the pillow and his feet pressed against the sheets so firmly they made a light squeaking sound. Thomas unwound himself, melting into the long moments that always followed after pleasure.

He withdrew his hand from his pants. He grimaced. He hadn’t planned very well for this - he usually tried to be neater when it was just himself. And he’d forgotten to factor in the responsiveness that came of being twenty-one years old. He’d rushed it. Thomas waited a few minutes more until the last trickle of satisfaction left his body.

Then he rolled carefully out of bed, feeling echoes of the precocious novelty he hadn’t experienced since first exploring himself. In adolescence, it was the apprehensive process of wandering over his own body that alerted Thomas to his preferences. For a brief period of months he thought that maybe what the local Sunday school teacher had told his cohort was true - that self-pleasure was the path to darkness hereto unknown. But wouldn’t darkness be frightening, logically? What he imagined - which was other boys - was anything but frightening. It was exhilarating. It was curious. And he’d never grown hair on his palms, either. That revelation solidified his fantasies and he savored them as never before with not a thought to God or anyone else. Well - except for Harry Keller. The considerably older boy was his first conscious interest, and he was a fixed point in Thomas’s imagination.

Thomas rinsed his hands with some water from the pitcher he kept on his dresser, flicking the excess into the basin. He dried them with a thin cotton towel, making a mental note to take responsibility for that bit of laundry. There were some things he couldn’t let others take care of.

He got back into bed, springs moaning louder than he was ever likely to while living under Downton’s roof. He drew his sheets up to his chin and imagined that Richard had just gotten up after spending the night beside him. It was a small space, the twin-sized bed, but they’d made it work in spite of being taller-than-average. And now he was freshening himself up, or making breakfast, or dressing for the day’s work, or any number of ordinary things they could enjoy with ease if they were a woman and a man.

He imagined Richard’s presence, steady and quiet, donning one of his suits somewhere near the door. Fumbling with his braces and hose garters. Whispering, “Damn”, when he clipped his finger by mistake, glancing furtively at Thomas to see if he’d woken up. And Thomas would pretend to be asleep, but his shallow breathing would give him away. And then Richard would come over and kiss him before he left, Thomas running a hand through Richard’s bed-tousled hair.

He knew he wasn’t likely to have good dreams when he slept. He had them when he was awake, instead.

...

_ “I have nothing to say,” she wouldn’t look at him. _

_ “Vicky, I -” _

_ “Nothing, Thomas. Understand?” _

_ He felt sick that he  _ did _ understand. Even at fifteen. _

...

“Dear Phyllis - I hope you can excuse this unexpected letter after so long. From what I remember, you were the sort-”

“Don’t read it out loud!” Thomas tried to snatch the letter from her, but she kept it playfully out of reach. His range of motion was hindered by the cigarette in his hand, holding it to the side so it didn’t burn her.

“Why?”

“Because -” he fumbled for an explanation “-it’s soppy nonsense!”

Anna scanned the content silently, eventually handing it back to him. “It’s not soppy. It seems genuinely sweet to me.”

He folded it back up and shoved it in his pocket. “I just wanted to know if it was normal.”

“What’s a normal job offer letter read like?” she asked dryly.

“Like  _ that _ , I hope,” he took a drag and exhaled. “The one I sent her last time weren’t exactly friendly. Just an offer of conditional understanding, possibly employment.”

“You haven’t promised her anything beyond your ability to give,” Anna reassured him. “Just that if she’s unhappy, there might be a place for her here.”

He’d spent a lot of time thinking about what to write. If it was too much, if it was too little. Too kind, too needy. Too open. He knew Phyllis told him she used to be a different person, but personally he felt he could handle her even if she came to Downton with the sticky hands and impressionable mind she was later so ashamed of. The Phyllis they’d left behind would still be in there, the Phyllis from his childhood. How much of Phyllis’s problems had been related to her location, the people who surrounded her?

“There’s always a place for her here,” he corrected.

...

Watching Thomas and John trying to get comfortably familiar was like observing two relatives who didn’t like each other much attempting to get along at Christmas luncheon. They were both doing it for her sake, which was flattering, and they were both doing it in their own ways, which was amusing.

They’d finally built up enough rapport to have a neutral exchange that lasted longer than thirty seconds.

“Those are neat things, what you’ve been doing,” John spoke between bites of oatmeal. “Those...word puzzles?”

Thomas, reaching for some toast, paused. “Thank you...they’re called crosswords.”

“Anna showed me one. Lots of work, are they?”

Thomas resumed his quest for toast, putting two slices on his plate. “If you have the mind for them. I prefer solving them, myself.”

“You could sell them to a paper, maybe.”

Thomas dismissed this idea, “It’s just a hobby.”

Anna noticed the rest of the table, while continuing their own conversations, kept sending interested looks in their direction. A civil conversation between Thomas the footman and Mr. Bates, his lordship’s valet? Some would’ve bet hell was like to freeze over, and Lady Mary like to go skating naked there, before casual words passed between those two.

“Could I look at one of your old ones,” John asked. “Try and solve it?”

“You could,” Thomas chewed his food thoughtfully. “ 

“The mail has arrived,” Mr. Carson dolled out the envelopes. Anna was excited by the thought of Phyllis coming to Downton - after the initial awkwardness, she and the other lady’s maid had developed a very effective working relationship. She was also excited because she could tell Thomas was so pleased by the idea. He was trying not to show it, but every time Mr. Carson announced the mail’s arrival, he was bright with anticipation. Each day that had passed - which now numbered almost two weeks - brought with it more desperation for the arrival of her response 

“Anything, Mr. Carson?”

“Nothing for you,” was the response, more absent than unkind.

“What’s keeping her reply?” Anna whispered to him after breakfast.

“Maybe it wasn’t as appealing an offer I thought it was,” he frowned lightly. Anna suspected he was concealing how deeply he felt his disappointment.

“Perhaps it’s been lost? Or held up?”

“If she doesn’t respond by week’s end, I’ll write her again,” he muttered. The idea made her a little anxious; Phyllis was someone they thought they could be sure of. If Phyllis didn’t fill  the vacancy left by O’Brien, who would? The ad had been in  _ The Lady _ for a week, now.

...

The bell outside the servant's entrance rang twice, and Daisy was too preoccupied to answer it.

“Could you get the door?” Daisy darted into the servant’s hall, where Anna was waiting to discuss the monthly linen inventory with Mrs. Hughes. These conversations were often treated like an informal “check-in”. Mrs. Hughes would ask questions about how the new maids were settling in and Anna would give her pertinent answers. There were no concerns about Ruby - Anna was a little sad to know she’d be gone within the next two months. She felt she knew the girl better. 

“Sorry?”

“The door! Mrs. Patmore’s trusted me with the souffles for luncheon and I can’t let her down! She’s talking with her ladyship about next week’s menu - what if she comes back but they’ve gone and collapsed?!”

Anna wanted to point out Daisy probably could’ve gotten the door in the time it took her to explain her predicament, and that the souffles would be fine. But she had nothing to do otherwise, and Daisy had already resumed her station by the oven - she crouched beside it, afraid to open it lest she destroy the hard work inside.

Anna opened the door.

“Hello - I have an appointment with the lady of the house. Eleven o’clock. I do hope it’s alright I came a bit early.”

Anna stared.

“...Am I to interview for the position in the courtyard, or are you going to step aside?”

Vera Bates gave her a prim, thankless smile as she crossed the threshold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in it now! >:) Sorry if there's mistakes. I could only read and re-read it so many times. As always, thank you for reading!


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